To Capture or Not To Capture - That is the question!

[Jay Gould]

Hi Guys, before I departed for South America we had a great discussion about cropping: http://birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php?t=51857

Today I have been walking around the Argentine Pampas carrying my 7D + 300 f/2.8 + 2.0X shooting that which appears.

As I walked around I thought about the fact that most of the birds I was shooting were definitely filling less than 50% of the view finder, most of them might be in the 20 - 25% of the view finder category, and if you include a reasonable amount of habitat for the perched birds, 50% of the view finder.

In the main, I am seeing birds I will not see again!

Question: when you know that the resulting image is going to require a 50% or greater crop, do you forgo the capture?

I have certainly come to realize that for general use and walking around, the longest lens I am going to have is the 300 + 2.0X (either with the 1.6 7D or the more likely with the 1.3 1D4). I walked today for several hours and when not shooting I am able to cradle the rig in my left arm just like carying a big baby ;) :p.

Many of these birds will not allow you to get close enough to fill the frame; many of these birds are fast and small and high in the sky.

However, they are beautiful - simply not perfect - with a 50% crop.

We have the HA police; is there a place within BPN for an image that is of a unique bird that is 50%+ cropped; that is not perfectly sharp?

In the thread pertaining to using the 300 f/4 with a 2.0X http://birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php?t=55520, Akos posted a very acceptable though not terribly sharp image with the comment: "Yes, IQ is noticeable, but IMHO it is more than a usable image."

To capture or not to capture; to share or not to share; that is the question!

My answer: I vote for sharing!

:D

[Fabs Forns]

Jay, I would definitely poste them in the Avian ID forum if you think the quality is not au pair with Avian.
I think you did the right think by capturing :) and of course, sharing!

[Desmond Chan]

As I walked around I thought about the fact that most of the birds I was shooting were definitely filling less than 50% of the view finder, most of them might be in the 20 - 25% of the view finder category, and if you include a reasonable amount of habitat for the perched birds, 50% of the view finder.

In the main, I am seeing birds I will not see again!

Question: when you know that the resulting image is going to require a 50% or greater crop, do you forgo the capture?

To capture or not to capture; to share or not to share; that is the question!

:D

Are you kidding me? Of course you photograph them ! Many people will, too. Whether they will be award-winning shots is simply not an issue here. Share them or not is up to you.

[WIlliam Maroldo]

Capture them! I bought a 2TB hard drive recently for $179 US. Storage space used to be an issue, but not so much anymore.
If anything the images serve as reminders where you were. The fact that the birds are small in the frame means to me that I should be thinking "environmental shot", and there is nothing wrong with that, other than the need to be much more conscious of composition.
So certainly capture. regards~Bill

[Mike Tracy]

Shoot away. I think it's considerably harder and more gratifying to compose a well done habitat then to execute a technically "perfect" full frame bird.

[Desmond Chan]

Shoot away. I think it's considerably harder and more gratifying to compose a well done habitat then to execute a technically "perfect" full frame bird.

If the bird is close to you, and let you take a picture of it, you can get such a full frame shot with a compact digital camera.

[Ed Cordes]

Absolutely capture them!!! Photography, for many of us, is not only a vehicle to create art, but also to record our experiences. The opportunity to share wonderful and unique experiences is the true magic of photography. If our images are sometimes good enough to be considered art - great!

Jay, you have the opportunity to record an experience very few people in the world will have. You have the opportunity to share this with everyone, including us detail obsessive BPN'ers. I think it best to enjoy the moments you have and record them as you see them. Do not obsess on every detail. Concentrate on recording the wonders of the world in which you are travelling.

I'll bet your images are actually better when you concentrate on recording the subject and don't allow your emotion to be diverted by thinking too much about technical details. Shoot from your heart. Post so we can share your wonder. :D

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Absolutely capture them!!! Shoot from your heart.

Jay,
This is perhaps the best advice someone can give you. Follow your heart. If you like it then click it. It will be reflected in the images. If you are not shooting from your heart, then it will not be music.

At times, we are in situations, where we may not see the subject again. If you are far off, then try to create an environmental portrait. Creating a pleasing environmental portrait is not an easy task. So take this as an opportunity to show the habitat. That may require playing around with greater depth of fields and perhaps waiting at the right place for the bird to move in etc etc.

Enjoy!

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Roger Clark]

Hi Jay,

I hope you had a great time in Antarctica.

On any capture, one should ask what your goal is. For example: For a web site? For documentation? for an 8x10 print in a photo album? If so then 50% subject size is fine (and even smaller). Fine art large prints of the bird? No. If fine art large environmental prints, then yes, but surroundings, light and composition become even more important.

Roger

[Jim Neiger]

Jay,

The only penalty for taking extra shots is the time you spend going thru them and throwing them away. This makes your question a personal one. If you think you may end up liking and keeping the images than shoot them. If you know you will simply waste your time deleting them later, why bother? That said, I often shoot lots of extra crap I know I won't keep. :)

[Marina Scarr]

If they were birds I have never seen and will probably never see again, I would be shooting away. Akos' picture that you mention is with stacked 2.0 and 1.4 teleconverters, not just the 2x. This makes for more glass and usually less sharpness. You should be ok with the 2.0 if you are on a tripod. Good luck.

[Doug Brown]

I would not hesitate to take the image!

[Jay Gould]

Love you all!!:D

[Chris Brennan]

Go for it Jay! Many of us travel to places where we may never go again... make the most of those rare moments you have! Take lots and lots of images... if you don't you'll probably regret it someday!

[Daniel Cadieux]

Yes, photograph at heart's content!!!

As Roger says it depends what you want to you with them. What I post here, and display on my website, or pass as "art" is typically at least 75-80% of full-frame...even less of a crop the better (for me).

Now, what you don't see are the many, many more that I take for myself (and family and friends) for souvenirs, memories, ID purposes, recording a rarity, etc....most of them that I enjoy looking at as much as the others, but in a different kind of way:).

[Magnus Thornberg]

Adapt your shooting to the given situation! Create habitat images if you can´t get close! Closeup is not always the best!

[Dave Blinder]

Jay - I always like to have at least one "placeholder image" of a bird I haven't photographed before. After i get that out of the way, I will wait until a solid opportunity. Give it a shot!

[Sivaprasad]

Adapt your shooting to the given situation! Create habitat images if you can´t get close! Closeup is not always the best!

Very true.. I second this advice as well, images taken with an artistic eye showing the habitat & environment can be as rewarding as any full frame shots. So fire away!

[Kerry Perkins]

Jay, capture all that you can! With my modest gear I don't get to fill the frame very often, but I still have the images that I set out to get. I have posted images in several of the forums here that were cropped all the way to 100% pixel size on the screen. They won't win any contests or make prints, but they are records of moments in time and space that I will never have again, and to me that means a lot. Plus, when you do get to fill your frame it is even more special. Looking forward to seeing those birds! :)

Happy travels!!

[Ákos Lumnitzer]

Jay

Just take the photos mate and make the best of every opportunity. As the guys said, storage media is dirt cheap now so space on a HDD is not an issue. :)

Best of luck with your birdies. :)

[Roger Clark]

Akos,
What you say is true, but Jay is on a 6-month trip, often in remote areas for long periods (like Antarctica). It's not like you can go to the local Best Buy and buy more memory cards. The better way in my opinion is to take only the shots that count and to learn not to be trigger happy. For example, in this situation I would take a couple of images as I first encountered the bird as documentation, then as Dave said, wait for the really good images with great light. Also, that teaches one to see.

Roger

[Jay Gould]

Akos,
What you say is true, but Jay is on a 6-month trip, often in remote areas for long periods (like Antarctica). It's not like you can go to the local Best Buy and buy more memory cards. The better way in my opinion is to take only the shots that count and to learn not to be trigger happy. For example, in this situation I would take a couple of images as I first encountered the bird as documentation, then as Dave said, wait for the really good images with great light. Also, that teaches one to see. Roger

Roger, probably one of the very few times, in apart at least, we are going to agree to disagree. :eek:

I just quickly reviewed the cropping thread (amazing in how many of these general threads they same players play!), and in that thread you said (I do read and try -subject to senior memoryitis :( -to remember what you wrote)


The point is the subject, lighting and composition are more important. If you saw a spectacular subject with spectacular light but it was too small in the frame, would you not get an image?

For example, the image I posted in the "Why Bird Photography" thread,
http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...ad.php?t=48899 (http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php?t=48899)
is a 3 megapixel image that was printed full page in Natures Best and has sold 16x18 inch prints in galleries. Sure it would be a better image with more pixels on subject, but I didn't have a choice. What matters is the image.


It seems that what you wrote in this thread and what you wrote in the cropping thread comes does to the definition of

"take only the shots that count".

While a divergence, you reference the fact that I am unable to buy more memory cards while traveling. :) While we did find an outlet for shopping fever, one at 65 South - Port Lockyear - the southern most post office/shop in the world and yes we did shop! - they didn't sell memory cards. In lieu of your travel procedure of saving all of your images on memory cards, I followed Artie's advice - sometimes almost to the point of falling asleep at my desk - and did a triage everyday before going to sleep. I will do a new thread on "my triage that worked".

Anyway, storage media was not a problem as I was carrying 4 x 500gb Toshiba external drives.

Fortunately, the lawyer in me - once a PIA always a PIA - can bend (twist?) your words :p so that "shots that count" can include blasting away at dots in the sky or dots high up in the trees that are going to warrant 50%+ crop because if I didn't obtain the distant image I would never obtain the image of that particular bird in that particular activity; at least a my current level of skill.

The Pintado I posted (http://birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php?t=55415) is a good example (I do have others which I will post) whereby it required a 50% crop because those little beautiful black **** were so fast and most of the time rarely filled 1/2 the frame that the posted image is probably my best of the bunch. Of course, I have only been HH for less than six months; there is no doubt that Jimmy or Doug would nail a tack sharp image under the same circumstances.

So, while I definitely follow your advice and strive to think "subject, light, and composition" [slc] (I remember that in some thread you pointed out that because your initial training was in the expensive film media days you generally shot substantially less images than those that started in the digital - pixels are free - age of discovery), when I am in the middle of nowhere and it is "now or never" I am going to follow the general advice given by the majority - blast away and while thinking about "slc", put capture before high quality.

As you say it has to do with what you are going to do with the image and my images will rarely be printed larger than 12 x 16; when I want to print larger I will be very selective pertaining to which images I print.

Thanks Mate for the thoughts; "SLC" is always something you, Artie, and others have drilled into me and the other newbies fortunate enough to have BPN as the foundation for their photography education. :D

[Roger Clark]

Roger, probably one of the very few times, in apart at least, we are going to agree to disagree. :eek:

It seems that what you wrote in this thread and what you wrote in the cropping thread comes does to the definition of

"take only the shots that count".



Hi Jay.
Let me clarify my position. In the "Why Bird Photography" thread, the image I posted was a crop from many years ago on a 6-megapixel camera. It is an example of when the subject, light and composition are more important than megapixels. Given the opportunity to do it again with a 16-megapixel camera, yes I would take the same shot and do a heavy crop, all because of the subject and lighting.

Here is how I would approach a new subject, say of a rare bird. I did just this recently with a snowy owl here in Colorado.

1) Stopped the car and got out, put the 2x on and imaged from a great distance so I had a documentary image. Do a frame or two.

2) Next move closer and get a better angle. Take a few more frames. Keep doing this until you can't improve.

3) Wait for better opportunity (bird doing something interesting rather than just sitting there).

For the snowy owl encounter, I took a total of 54 images over a period of about 3 hours. Five of them are posted here: http://www.clarkvision.com/galleries/gallery.NEW
and all are 50% or greater crops (from 21 megapixels). But of the 54 images, a fair number were for examples on lighting. If I wasn't doing lighting articles, I would have taken less, perhaps less than 25. Now if the bird was more active, e.g. flying, I certainly would have taken more, many more.

Now, while I was there, another photographer walked up with a 100-400 L zoom and fired off about 50 images, mostly of the back of the bird's head, obviously trigger happy. If he would have slowed down and looked and even waited a couple of minutes, he could have gotten much better images.

With active wildlife, if you are in the right position and good light, many exposures are warranted because you never know what the animal will do. But if it is a bird on a stick, there are fewer possibilities (e.g. beak open, beak closed closed, preen here, preen there, look this way, look that way). Flight imaging and two or more interacting require more images. But again, learning to see and anticipate the action and composition is better in my opinion than simply holding one's finger on the shutter button.

So it all comes down to situation, subject and lighting. But editing in the field teaches one to see and saves time deleting later.

Roger

[Jay Gould]

Thanks Roger, I certainly look forward to shooting with you and learning from you either in Colorado, Tanzania, or China (now looks like 2012 for the Giant Pandas!).

[Ákos Lumnitzer]

Akos,
What you say is true, but Jay is on a 6-month trip, often in remote areas for long periods (like Antarctica). It's not like you can go to the local Best Buy and buy more memory cards. The better way in my opinion is to take only the shots that count and to learn not to be trigger happy. For example, in this situation I would take a couple of images as I first encountered the bird as documentation, then as Dave said, wait for the really good images with great light. Also, that teaches one to see.

Roger


Now why didn't I think of that? :eek::confused: :eek: :confused:

I am sure Jay is intelligent enough to work out what to keep and what not.

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Jay,
I agree with Roger, that if you slow down then there would be opportunity to observe many more behaviour. Yesterday, I stood at one spot for four hours and saw some good bird behaviour. It is better than just driving round or trekking your heavy lens and tripod. Also, the size of my Mark IV raw files are about three times that of my 1 D Mark II files. So deleting Raw files take much longer. So your 7D Raw files should take some time to get deleted. Better to be selective while clicking as well.

I rarely crop my images. However, I would suggest that you click images where the bird occupies even half of the frame. Look for environmental images. All the images won't go for big fine art print. However, they will serve other purposes. Have you thought of writing a travelogue? I am sure very few of us will visit all those places you have visited. Your cropped images will help in telling the story.

Just enjoy. We only live once. Today never comes back again. Enjoy as much as you can.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi