Black Swan

[Colin Driscoll]

1DXIII 600 f4 III 1.4 III 840mm HH
1/2500 f7.1 iso640
Manual

A good exercise in toggling a single AF point onto the head using the new smart controller.
Slight crop, levels, S&H, de-saturate a little, removed a bit of the early morning yellow cast, light sharpen.

[gail bisson]

Good HA.
I would take a bit off the top to make this a 6 x 4 crop and also give a bit more room on the LHS.
If it had been possible, a lower POV would have been nice .
The big problem with this image is the whites. They are blown out.
Do you have your "blinkies" or "highlight alert"set to enable ? This is a quick way to check for blown highlights. A quick glance down on the screen will tell you if you need to adjust your exposure. A good starting point when learning to expose to the right.
The blinkies are rendered onto your JPEG on the screen so you do have a bit of leeway with the RAW in post processing if you have a couple of very tiny blinking pixels.
The issue is a bit more complicated than what I have just explained but still a good starting point,
Gail

[Daniel Cadieux]

Good stuff by Gail. I will say that you got a perfect head angle and that I love the really long neck with good feather texture on it.

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Colin, did you shoot this portrait or landscape, to me is crying out to go landscape and yo may well have but chose this crop, as it allows subject to swim into? To me the image needs more below I feel, do you have any more below? You can open up more of the blacks to provide more texture & detail which in turn, makes the water less 'deep/harsh' in it's appearance, but the water might be as is??? As Gail mentioned, the bright whites carry little tonal range and give the appearance of being blown and the soft yellow plumage looks harsh, perhaps this has stemmed from PS's SH tool which is less than ideal and pretty basic, but again you may like to revisit the layer and reduce the adjustment.

The head/neck has some good detail and in particular the bill, sharpening looks better and I do like the HA turned towards you.


A good exercise in toggling a single AF point onto the head using the new smart controller.

Good for you and remember, you can dumb it down to be less responsive.

TFS
Steve

[John Mack]

Agree with the others. This is your best i have seen. In regards to overall image quality.

[Colin Driscoll]

Thanks folks.
Gail, yes I use blinkies and there were none so I have blown them in PP.
The RAW is a bit underexposed.
Steve, shot in landscape. No room on the bottom.
This bird was on a mission to get somewhere so I was following along the lake edge.

[Steve Kaluski]

Thanks for the added info, get to grips with ETTR it will be a big asset Colin, techs & comp can follow in the coming weeks.