skip

[Leroy Laverman]

It's been a few weeks since I've been able to get out. I took this sanderling shot this morning. The light is too harsh but I'd rather shoot in hard light than not at all I suppose. A small flock came running down the beach towards me and I should have dialed in some negative EC but I'm too slow. This one is nearly full frame. Some spots on the beach were cloned out as well.

Technical Bits
Nikon D80
300mm f/4 + 1.4 TC
ISO 400, 1/1000 sec f/9.5

[Samir Begovic]

Very good focus and the moment with both legs in the air. Angle is ok. There is a little dark area by the forehead, and a little halo almost unnoticeable.

[Leroy Laverman]

Hadn't noticed the dark spot before. Of course now I can't stop seeing it. I'll go back and clone that out. Thanks for pointing it out to me.

[Manos Papadomanolakis]

I really like the soft light and the angle!

[Arthur Morris]

You did relatively well in the harsh light. As Samir noted, the dark area by the head is rather strange... Not sure if the brightest whites on the breast are over-exposed. If not, they could use a selective Linear Burn. If they are, you need to reconvert darker. What are you doing your conversions with?

Love the pose here.

[Doug Brown]

Whites look good on my monitor. Love the pose you captured! The dark spot was the first thing that caught my eye, but that's easy to remove. The bird looks slightly oversharpened on my monitor.

[Leroy Laverman]

The whites on the breast are overexposed unfortunately. I'm using lightroom 2.1 for the conversion and have used the spot adjustments on the breast and face to dial the exposure way down selectively. I agree about the oversharpening Doug. I'll have to pull that back a touch when I get rid of the dark spot. Thanks for the comments everyone.

[Arthur Morris]

You are right Doug. There are just a few over-exposed pixels those on the forehead. Still, a small LB on the brightest whites would likely help.

[Arthur Morris]

The whites on the breast are overexposed unfortunately.

Disagree. I checked the histogram on the JPEG and there were less than a handful of hot pixels as noted above. (Our posts must have Xed in cyberspace.)

[Leroy Laverman]

Thanks for all the suggestions. I removed the dark spot near the head, burned in the highlights some more and got rid of the blue cast in the shadows on the rear of the bird. It's still somewhat oversharpened for web display but it should be fine for a print.

[Arthur Morris]

Thanks for all the suggestions. I removed the dark spot near the head, burned in the highlights some more and got rid of the blue cast in the shadows on the rear of the bird. It's still somewhat oversharpened for web display but it should be fine for a print.

Hey Leroy, When you removed the dark area in front of the head you left a dark halo. The highlights look better. I am confused as to what you said about the sharpening. No image should be sharpened until it has been sized for final output. A web JPEG needs only a fraction of the sharpening needed for even the smallest hi-rez print...