Brown Pelican

[Bob Decker]

I shot this out the car window on my way home about 11:00 AM this morning. 40D, Sigma 50-500mm. +.33 Ev, iso 100, f8, 1/400. Raw coversion in ACR with some SAT and exposure adjustments plus a slight s-curve applied. Bird and piling sharpened in PS CS3 with a touch of dodge and buring around the eye area. A selective smart sharpen applied to the eye. Noise reduction applied to background.

[Harold Davis]

it looks a tad under, but still has a nice mood due to that. might try warming it up a little to pull some more color out of the clouds at the bottom half of the bg. i do like the compositon.

bob, are you close to morehead city/atlantic beach? i was born and raised in rocky mount and your area was my old stomping grounds!!

[Bob Decker]

Hi Harold,

This was shot on the MHC waterfront... I spent some time on AB this morning too, but not too satisfied with the results... wrong sun direction. But it's always fun trying anyway. I'm about equidistant between Morehead City, Beaufort and Havelock.

Thanks for the suggestions.

[Alfred Forns]

Hi Bob

You are right regarding light direction and would try getting in closer to fill the frame, these guys are easy to approach !!


Tech wise do raise the ISO If you shot at 500 and taking the crop factor into consideration ... easy to run into motion blur !!! You should be safe to 400 or over if there is no over exposure !!! .. for this one if you are a bit back lit an exposure of close to 1 2/3 or more is needed !!!

[Jeff Cashdollar]

Bob, I never shoot at ISO 100 too restrictive, most do not go below 200 and hover around 400 on the Canon side. The reason the exposure is under is b/c the background was back lit IMO (I could be wrong) and the light forced the meter to over compensate. You were on the right track adding +.33,.. needed to add more light - Al had it right - probably 1.5 or more to counter meter.

This is true when shooting birds, they are so small in the frame that often the background controls the meter. In this case, spot might have helped as well but still need the proper EV compensation. Image looks a tad flat too, maybe open aperture more to boost shutter and remember. Underexposed images suffer from loss of light which can affect IQ. On balance you did well my friend, hope these comments help.

Artie has a cool method of thinking thru exposure in Digital Basics (DB). He looks at all images based on the BG tones and FG tones and then determines how the histogram might look in hid minds-eye. If you read the first few pages of (DB) he will show what exposure compensation he used on images like this. Light BG and light to mid-light FG, he reviews the histogram and the settings he uses - good stuff - its where I learned the basis of my exposure theory. When I walk up on a scene and review the light angle, first thing I think about is, the difference between the BG & FG tonality and how and I going to meter it given the current light - or am I going to move around the subject or move away and wait for the light to favor me, or use flash. I have found that I need to read weather forecast, have my flash/BB in pocket and plan - talk to you soon.