Lord of the delta-white tailed eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla)

[Bretoteanu Dan]

Hy, I managed to grab 3 shots of the eagle as it flew past our boat. Techs were 1 DX mk I with 1-4 mk. II f7.1 SS1/3200 ISO 800 (was fiddling with settings and caught unnaware). In DPP 4.12 I raised the exp by 0.67, increased shadows by 3 and lowered highlights by 2. In CS 6 I used Artie's contrast mask on the eagle, in selective color I boosted the yellow by 60 and increased the saturation by 10. On the BG layer I darkened the sky with selective color, selected blue and added black by 70. I added canvas on the left and top side. Resized, then applied Smart Sharpen to the eagle at 50%. Not exactly thrilled by the results, but learning the ropes is a long process:)

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Dan, I think you did well under the circumstances, but there are a lot of flaws within the image. Is it a massive crop? I feel it needs a bit more below, the sky looks a bit OTT in terms of blue unless you had a CPL filter on it. Blacks/Shadows are clipped, loosing detail and the tail is less than ideal. There are sharpening halos around the subject too. As for the actual 'pose' of the bird I will leave it with the avian members to advise.

I've just tried to get a bit more tonal range within the subject and tempered the sky a tad, adding Contrast to the above will kill things even more.

TFS
Steve

[John Mack]

Tricky light here and not ideal shooting conditions. Steve's repost does bring out some of the detail nicely.

[Randy Stout]

Good assessment and work by Steve:

There is real learning value in trying to 'recover' an image that presents some challenges, so I encourage you to keep working on them. As your skills continue to improve, it does get easier. If I have a really challenging one, I will often work on it for a while, then put it aside for a few days and revisit it. Most of the ones in this category never show up on the boards, but working on them helps on others. So, keep pushing your boundaries!

Cheers

Randy

[William Dickson]

I can only agree totally with Steve and Randy.....Great advice there....The good thing is, that the path to 'getting better' is fantastic and after a while comes naturally.

Will

[Bretoteanu Dan]

Hy Steve, its not a massive crop from the original file and I actually cropped from under the eagle, I thought it would be to much dead space:) How did you get more tonal range and how did you tempered the sky? Your version of the sky looks like mine on the BG layer before I made it darker. And yes, the light was harsh, was taken around 1 PM, but it was take it or leave it ocasion. Any advice on how should I have exposed in camera for a shot like this? Dark bird against blue sky, maybe I should have overexposed because the camera would have under exposed the scene ( the sky is brighter than the eagle is and it occupies more of the frame than the eagle)? I tend to get confused when to under and when to overexpose, and its get even more confusing when I try ETTR.

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Dan,


How did you get more tonal range and how did you tempered the sky?

Just opened it up in Curves, but not ideal as this will bring in noise/pattern noise with the shadow areas.


Your version of the sky looks like mine on the BG layer before I made it darker.

Just took a guess and used a couple of adjustments ie Col Balance...


Any advice on how should I have exposed in camera for a shot like this?

Shoot/exp for the subject and forget the BKG, so I might have taken a punt and put +1 EV and then viewed the Histogram, then adjusted accordingly, but if you have time. So long as you don't blow the BKG you can retreive this later within PP. Just watch your ISO & SS if you do plus the EV, as it could catch you out with ISO up & SS down. Plus, you can change the type of metering, but folk it seems never do?