The Sentinel

[Bill McCrystyn]

20D 100-400L IS @EFL640 ISO400 F/8 1/1250 HANDHELD

Breeding plumage and color show off this male Cattle Egret standing guard.

[Arthur Morris]

Hi Bill, I moved this to ETL where it will get more attention and you will get more help. The best thing about the image is the framing with the subject looking out of the frame and the second bird in a nice spot making a nice juxtaposition.

The white's on the neck of the main subject are burned. With him small in the frame he did not effect the meter much so if you were working at the metered exposure that is likely what caused overexposure of the whites. This was a very difficult and cluttered situation. There are at least two (and possibly more--it is hard to telll) distracting birds in the background. And there are lots and lots of branches that do not help the composition. As you become more experienced you will begind to look for and discover cleaner situations.

We encourage everyone to include the location and as much data as possible so that we are better able to help.

later and love, artie

ps: the bird is not in breeding plumage.

[Bill McCrystyn]

Thank you very much Artie. This is one of those - spot meter the whites. Rather than that (very hard with fat Canon mertering) I should have seen the contrast in DR and gone to manual mode or full pattern, Is that what you are saying? I do seem to have problems with my whites in a lot of my images. The full frame is below. I became rather enamored with the birds regal profile and took the shot. It was taken on a small island at Lake Hamilton from the boat at about 50'. AWB Partial

[Richard Kowalski]

Hi Bill,
I have a 20D and I think overall the metering is really good. I usually keep it on Evaluative Metering unless I have a specific reason to change. You say you used spot metering, but the 20D doesn't have a spot meter; It has partial metering. By the look of your image, I'd say a lot of the background was metered. Since the meter was trying to bring the dark BG up to an average gray, the highlights got burned. (The 20D manual states partial metering is good for when the BG is >brighter< than the subject.)

I certainly won't speak for Artie, but the third chapter of his ABP (1), "Making Good Exposures" is a must read and alone is worth the price of the book. If you don't have a copy, check with him to see if he has any copies left. On page 60 he has a chart for Center-Weighted Average metering; it suggests the correct course of action for your image. On a extremely white subject with a dark bg, you should use - 1/3 to -1/2 stop compensation. It sounds counter intuitive, but you are trying to keep the brightest whites from being over-saturated. Initially your image will look dark, but you can then bring up the shadows with post processing, and not lose any details in the highlights.

Hope that helps.

Richard

[Bill McCrystyn]

Thank you Richard. It's not really a matter of good or bad. The 20D meters on partial (the closest thing it has to spot; see my technicals) at a rather fat 9%. I find evalutive (what I call full pattern) tends to chunk off hunks of dynamic range in an attempt to make everything even. It would appear partial metering on the whites with some addtional compensation would have been best in therory. In fact, hitting a small metering target from a 18' deck boats moving platform, is easier said than done.

I did not realize that the whites are so critical and figured the new digital metering would take care of them so have tended to be rather sloppy in these situations. I can see the old film rules still apply. It's just that now, as you say, one has more lattitude in CS3 to correct.

As far as the branches go, usually (as in others) it is called "natural habitat" as long as it doesn't block the subject. Artie was right, it was a "difficult and cluttered situation". Next time I hope I will do better with it.

[Richard Kowalski]

I did not realize that the whites are so critical and figured the new digital metering would take care of them so have tended to be rather sloppy in these situations. I can see the old film rules still apply.




Dealing with whites and highlights is even more critical when imaging digitally than it was with film. Once the pixels saturate, the information is lost forever and no amount of post processing can bring it back. The metering is much better now than in the past and will only get better in the future. I think until the technology can match the eye-brain in their ability to see and adjust for a large range of brightness, the photographer knowing how the meter can be fooled and applying the correct exposure compensation will still be required.

Don't forget to check the histogram and the Highlight Alert.

Richard

[Bill McCrystyn]

Good point Richard, the histogram and highlights are a tool I shall use in the future. Thanks for your help.

[Bill McCrystyn]

What would be the consensus of using partial metering on the primary subject (light area) then lock (*) the AE, then pan as needed or recompose? This method, by the way, leaves the compensation available also.