A Calm Moment

[Glennie Passier]

Today was practice hand holding. This was one of the better ones. I have a few sweet ones of youngsters that have gone begging because not quite sharp enough. So a good lesson learned. More practice!

In ACR - Increased exposure half a stop and shadows to the right +23
In PSCS6 - Added canvas on the RHS. Curves adjustment on bird and NR on BG. HS Layer on feet because they looked purple. Brightened his eye which brought out a couple more catch lights that probably should go?

Canon 5D2
Sigma150-600 @ 480
ISO 1000
1/500 sec
f8
Evaluative metering
HH


C&C Always welcomed and appreciated!

[Warren Spreng]

Great pose, nice to catch one upright! As to the catch lights they don't bother me but I'd probably try a version without them to see what you think. What confuses me is the softer areas at the edges of his blue head when the beak and areas behind are nice and sharp. Maybe the beak is actually a little behind that part of the face or it is just the nature of the feathers on that part of the head.

[annmpacheco]

Hi Glennie,
wowsa, what a beauty and i agree the outside cheeks look a tad soft, where was your focal point here?

I need to catch up on postings, been on the road... Love this species.

[Glennie Passier]

Warren, yes. I didn't notice that you know. These parrots can fluff themselves out a bit, but as said hand held.

Ann, Thank you for swinging by! I'm practicing my HH ability and it looks like I need a bit more practice. I had a look at the focal point. All were activated from between his feet up in the diamond sharp. Really weird because the nearest one was just on the red part of his neck, so his cheeks would have been closer than his eye.

[Diane Miller]

You may find me in your yard tomorrow....

Love what you're doing with these guys! 1/500 is thin ice for hand holding at 480mm, but not at all bad here and great practice. We all need more light, always!! It it possible he was ruffling the feathers on his cheeks and throat (or wind was)?

The issue I notice here is the low contrast in the darker areas. Getting the exposure more to the right at capture would have made that better.

I was out this morning (way too early) practicing hand-holding with my new camera -- it's heavy but wonderful. In fact I was about to post a discovery I made about catchlights, which were discussed in a recent post by Warren, but I didn't know then something I do now. (Which could be true of many things....) Stay tuned a few minutes and I'll start a thread.

[Glennie Passier]

Diane, I have taken a few frames today that were well and truly exposed to the right. When I have decreased the exposure in ACR, the colour has gone all wonky in the birds. Maybe I've ETTRd too much?

[Diane Miller]

That seems very unexpected. Are you using the Adobe Standard camera profile?

[Adhika Lie]

I am so late to this party but beautiful bird, Glennie! I love the composition on this one. I think you are successful with 1/500, congrats, Glennie! Was the image stabilization on? On my tamron, it helps quite a bit.

How do you like shooting handheld? For me, it can be quite liberating some time. I shoot with my tripod 95% of the time I shoot my landscape pictures, but carrying a tripod with a huge lens (not that 150-600 was too heavy compared to those big prime lenses) can be very limiting. I do like to shoot my birds handheld except when I don't have to move around a lot (like when I was at the rookery). I wonder if you have any preference so far...

As the ETTR goes, can you share how the colors are wonky? I am very interested in this subject because I shoot a lot of scenes with a huge dynamic range (sunset/sunrise) so I always want to know the experience of other people in the subject of exposure. From my experience, recovering highlight is not as easy as recovering shadows. On my Nikon, if the most important parts of the image is on the highlight, I would rather it not ETTR'd; case in point is this post (http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php/135042-Sunset-Drama) on the Landscape forum a few weeks ago. I had to open up quite a bit on the FG and it probably have resulted in loss of details (and thus the perception of softness) in the image.

[Diane Miller]

Good point Adhika raises about the ability to bring up shadow detail. I don't remember specifics for which cameras (it does vary with the model) but that is a feature where Nikon has been way ahead of Canon -- and still are despite some recent reviews about the 1DX II. Many Nikons have much more ability to bring up shadows without noise. A search for "ISO invariance" should turn up information.

So yes, it pays to know your camera, and I only know the Canons and the lenses I have used.

The ETTR advice should still apply to Nikons, but would not be as necessary. I suspect both have about the same ability to recover highlights, but I have never seen information on it. So with a Nikon I wouldn't give as much importance to ETTR., knowing I can dig out the shadows.

Would be interested in Adhika's and other Nikon users' experiences.

[Michael Thompson]

Nice shot! I love the colors, it wouldn't be a calm morning if one of these showed up during a photo walk lol! Nice job with hand holding, careful- it is addicting :)