CATTLE EGRET- HOW TO EXPOSE WHITES

[Harshad Barve]

Dear All

This ia a cattle Egret in Breeding colors
My problem is exposing whites of body, always looks like blown away to me
Taken with D300/600MM/ISO 200 at F8 with shutter speed of 1/1600 at 1500 Hrs in Indian Summers
Need help on this

Harshad

[Lance Peters]

Hi - whites look pretty good to me as presented - couple of hotish spots maybe.
Soft light is the key with white birds - harsh light and you are going to have problems every time. Turn on your overexposure blinkies in your camera and check your histogram.
If your BG is going to be changing all the time - worth working in manual mode - meter the bird and set the correct exposure manually then then changing BG will not influence your exposure (I would meter a middle tone - green grass for instance and add 1 1/2 - 2 stops of light to that as a starting point)

Feels a little tight on the LHS - Like the breeding plumage, Ha and eye contact looks good and sharp throughout.
Need to keep in mind the sun angle - looking forward to seeing more :)

[Jeff Cashdollar]

Here's me 2 cents:

There is alot of information out there dealing with this topic. I inferred from APB, sunny day/smart meter middle-tone (MT) or Brighter EV=0, or on MT background EV= -1/3. In looking at like or same type of photos white on a MT background, -1/3 seems to work often. Of course, only the on-site photographer knows the environmental variables. Like Lance said, early morning/soft light is very supportive.

I have even read about a morph to the sunny f/16 rule, named sunny f/22 rule. Used to reproduce whites faithfully. The thinking is, it works the same as the sunny f/16 rule except the base lens aperture is f/22 reducing the light levels by half - darkening the the highlighted areas and add detail to the image? I do not use this, but thought it interesting. You did not mention any EV, I assume it was zero. Whites look good to me, I see some feather detail and image texture. Was the histogram centered or biased to the left, well done, maybe more canvas on right side.

[Dave Phillips]

beautiful golden plumage harshad. I usually will spot meter the "white"
and then add +1 to +1.3EV for a test shot, checking in cam histogram.

If it looks good, then I will go manual if light is fairly consistent.
May not be best, but that's what I do.

Here is your image opened a good bit, just levels and no fancy post process.
Histo is still goo....also sharpened a bit more. Something to compare to:)

also note big dust spots on sensor

[David Thomasson]

There are no blown whites in the image you posted. I used levels to find the spot where whites would
first clip when the highlight slider is pulled in (red circle), then set white point there at 242.242.242. That
leaves a good margin to prevent clipped highlights. Adjusted the background blue and varied it a little
with a gradient. Very nice shot. As far as whites go, I think it's better to be a little under the mark
than a little over. Nice capture of a beautiful bird. I like the composition.

http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/5347/cattlegret.jpg

[WIlliam Maroldo]

My contribution: I agree with Lance. And can't emphasize the need for soft light enough, and with white birds, that show such a great contrast between the dark of shadows and white, it is more important than with any other bird color. Soft light means filtered by clouds. This isn't suddenly fixed because of the sun's angle is low. Early morning sunlight can be harsh as well. Early morning can be good because there is often a morning mist, or thin clouds that burn off with the day, but the magic light isn't necessarily magic when it comes to shooting images of birds.
Cloud filtered, or soft light, creates less contrast, and this is important, for this means less extremes in luminosity. It means that an image can be overexposed and not blow out the whites. This is especially important with high ISO images, which have many advantages, such as being able to use high shutter speeds along with rather large apertures necessary for flight captures. The down side is noise can be created in the image, but noise, in large part, is a product of underexposure. Regardless of ISO, restoring an underexposed image to correct exposure always results in noise to one degree or other. Decreasing an overexposed image to correct exposure does not. Noise reduction programs are imperfect, regardless of what a software manufacturers proclaim. There is always a loss of detail. Sometimes it is acceptable. Sometimes not.
Cloud cover also allows less concern about the suns position, and far greater leeway not only in achieving good exposure, but in getting a good angle on the action, so to speak. In bright conditions the suns position must remain a top priority, and the position of the sun, both its height in the sky, and angle as it relates to the subject, often doesn't allow proper exposure. Use of test shots, which can easily be deleted(aren't digital cameras wonderful!), along with the histogram, are integral regardless of lighting conditions.
I agree with Lance on the need for manual exposure as well, and in soft light, with less variation in light intensity regardless of the angle of image capture, it works very well. In harsh light, using exposure compensation, is often a hit or miss proposition, and blown-out whites, and in a way the equally bad underexposure, are a constant threat. Manual exposure is far less effective under those conditions as well, and I'll go aperture priority and the guessing of exposure compensation.
The bottom line: if it is a bright sunny day I'm tempted on saying forget about the snowy and great egrets, and I'm afraid the cattle egrets as well. Your image here does, in a way, shows that it is possible to get a good image regardless, but to me the fact I know when I get home, there may only be a few images that haven't been ruined by the blown out whites and high contrast, and more often than not, it was when a cloud mercifully covered the sun momentarily I'll get a few good ones in. Bright sun? Go for the night herons, the green herons, and best, the anhingas and cormorants! And bring your fill-flash. By the way, although this may be a female, or a juvenile during breeding season, the males breeding colors:red legs, red bill, purple lores, and red eyes are absolutely beautiful, and make up for the rather drab colors at other times of year.
One more thing. Wonderful image of the cattle egret. Nice composition and feather detail, and you did very well in positioning yourself between the sun and subject, and did about as good as possible. One more thing about the whites looking blown. It is not really of a question of how they look, but how they measure. Blown out whites by definition , in the RGB colorspace, are Red 255/Green 255/Blue 255. 255 is the upper limit of luminosity, pure white. Red 0, Green 0, Blue 0, is pure black.
Hope I've been helpful. ~Bill

[Harshad Barve]

Dear All

Thanks a ton for such a informative suggations , will try to learn & implement
Thanks once again
Harshad

[Gus Cobos]

Hi Harshard,
I like your capture, love the fine details in the feathers...agree with the fine advise given...looking forward to your next one...:cool:

[Alfred Forns]

Great suggestions above !!!! I'm liking this thread very much

A couple of points I would like going over.

Solid advice from Lance Great on all points.

Jeff came up with something really good ... the sunny 16 rule was created by John Shaw and basically tells you in full sun you can use 16 over the ISO and will have a perfect exposure. Now for whites you need to compensate so John came up with the sunny 22 rule which never became popular. It is "one full stop less" than the 16 .. it is compensation for the whites.

Dave mentions working in spot and closing which is a fine .. personal choice. You can also use an incident meter but basically its what works for you and getting consistent results. For me I use the the Evaluative in camera meter and do a lot metering off the sky.

David has a great point setting you whites and remember not all monitors will show whites the same. High end monitors will do much better. Exposing wise I would not underexpose anything, just nail the exposure which in the histogram will have info in the last box to the right without going over. As far as being under the mark than other as Dave mentions I think he is referring not having pixels running up the right side. Just have data in that last box.

William makes a good point on shooting soft light and passing up chances in harsh light. One point that was a little confusing is the ISO It only affect the sensitivity of light but not compensation in any way.

Good looking bird, bg, exposure and sharp ... only a lower angle would have been better !!! Congrats !!!