African Black Duck

[Arno Ellmer]

Image created this morning at a small nature reserve near my home.

Canon 1DX
400mm f5.6
Manual
1/2500
f/6.3
ISO 2500
Hand held

[Miguel Palaviccini]

Arno,

Looks like you had the techs right on to get this action shot. The timing is nice, with the feet just hitting the water and the body still above.

The light looks quite harsh, and the underwing looks blown out on my monitor. Not sure if that can be recovered in this photo, but your location sure looks promising for a future visit.

Miguel

[Arthur Morris]

Not sure what Miguel meant by "Looks like you had the techs right on..." as the WHITEs are totally blown. This is a perfect example of false detail recovery: the RGB values for the WHITEs read in the mid-220s yet there is zero detail there. None whatsoever. Neither a Linear Burn or NIK's Detail Extractor helped at all.

As for the rest, wonderful wings raised landing pose and I like the splash. As seen in the repost, the image could stand a lot more sharpening. I ran a 15-65 Contrast Mask on the head and neck and then sharpened the whole thing with my standard 1024 JPEG sharpening: 140/.3/0.

It is likely that the WHITEs are too far gone in the RAW files to be recovered but I would love to be wrong.

Arno: how did you meter the image????

[Arno Ellmer]

Not sure what Miguel meant by "Looks like you had the techs right on..." as the WHITEs are totally blown. This is a perfect example of false detail recovery: the RGB values for the WHITEs read in the mid-220s yet there is zero detail there. None whatsoever. Neither a Linear Burn or NIK's Detail Extractor helped at all.

As for the rest, wonderful wings raised landing pose and I like the splash. As seen in the repost, the image could stand a lot more sharpening. I ran a 15-65 Contrast Mask on the head and neck and then sharpened the whole thing with my standard 1024 JPEG sharpening: 140/.3/0.

It is likely that the WHITEs are too far gone in the RAW files to be recovered but I would love to be wrong.

Arno: how did you meter the image????

Thank you for the comments and the excellent repost,Arthur !
I saw that the whites were blown and tried to recover ,but I was not successful. Shot in manual with E. C. 0.0 ( -1/3 would likely have helped for the whites here )
The metering was evaluative.
Looking at the image on the post it appears darker than the RAW image.This is also the first pp done on my new DELL Monitor ,so I'm still curious if the calibration etc is successful/accurate.
regards,

Arno

[Arthur Morris]

Thank you for the comments and the excellent repost,Arthur ! I saw that the whites were blown and tried to recover ,but I was not successful. Shot in manual with E. C. 0.0 ( -1/3 would likely have helped for the whites here ) The metering was evaluative. Looking at the image on the post it appears darker than the RAW image.This is also the first pp done on my new DELL Monitor ,so I'm still curious if the calibration etc is successful/accurate. regards, Arno

YAW. If you were in Manual mode how do you know that the EC at the moment of exposure was 0?

[Arno Ellmer]

YAW. If you were in Manual mode how do you know that the EC at the moment of exposure was 0?

Sorry !! ... blonde moment.Meant AV with EC = 0 . Should have picked it up in EXIF data !!!

[Arthur Morris]

Thanks. I am glad that I sniffed that out. EC = 0 would likely be fine for the swimming duck. But with the dark tones of the duck and the relatively dark tones of the water/background you would probably have had to set -1 in Av Mode had you known that the duck was gonna fly in with the white underwings showing. Best would have been Manual mode for the duck, say 1/2500 at f/6.3 and then to have spun the shutter speed to 1/5000 to save the whites. Or been at ISO 1250 and cut everything in half....

[Arno Ellmer]

Thanks. I am glad that I sniffed that out. EC = 0 would likely be fine for the swimming duck. But with the dark tones of the duck and the relatively dark tones of the water/background you would probably have had to set -1 in Av Mode had you known that the duck was gonna fly in with the white underwings showing. Best would have been Manual mode for the duck, say 1/2500 at f/6.3 and then to have spun the shutter speed to 1/5000 to save the whites. Or been at ISO 1250 and cut everything in half....
Thanks for the constructive advice, Artie. Highly appreciated !

[Arthur Morris]

YAW; it all comes down to the basics :)