Masked marvel

[wendell westfall]

Nikon D70s 70-200 VR 86mm 1/1600 f2.8 ISO 400 Shutter priority

i caught this beautiful egyptian goose this morning nibbling at some leaves beside a pond. The morning light was good, with cool clear weather and no wind.

I cropped the image only slightly, then used levels, a bit of contrast and USM. I think I came out with a pretty good image. I'll be interested in what more I can do and how I might do it.

Thanks,
Wendell

[Alfred Forns]

Hi Wendell The first thing that comes to mind is a lower angle if possible With a long focal length you might be able to get away standing since it flattens the perspective Here is steep Point of focus seems to be on the body of the goose Would try placing on head and re-composing

You did well with processing maybe a little more contrast If you have more of them look out for their interaction They will play rough!!!

[Robert O'Toole]

Wendell

Agree with alfred on the capture side comments, but with the post capture work my comments are different. The image, pretty good, is contrasty in my PC. The white spots look very bright and without any detail. I would re work and leave out the Levels step. Then Select the eye, beak, and head and apply some sharpening there to make the image look its best. At that point if the image looks a little dull apply a slight S curve.

Robert

[wendell westfall]

Thanks guys, Alfred and Robert. I'm going to try and work with both suggestions. I took a few more pictures of these geese and also of other birds, and in all of them I had a problem with parts of the whites having little if any detail, to the point for many that I couldn't bring it out properly in post processing. Maybe there is a camera setting I could change that would be helpful? Should I be using shutter priority under these circumstances?

Wendell

[Robert O'Toole]

Wendell,

Yes all depends on the origional file, but the image looks like is was exposed well, I think in this case it was just the conversion process. Preserving HL detail can be hard in some cases, conversion settings, even the RAW converter itself can give you drastic dif levels of HL detail.

Usually for difficult scenes Manual mode is preferred.

Robert

[Robert Amoruso]

Wendell,

It is not a function of shutter priority or aperture priority or manual. The whites in the head don't look overexposed but on the butt they do. What you need to be doing if over exposing the whites is lessening the exposure by 1/3 to 2/3 stops here. If in an auto exposure mode (shutter priority or aperture priority), you use the exposure compensation controls on the camera to increase or decrease the exposure the camera is choosing. If in manual, you change aperture (smaller) or shutter (faster) to decrease exposure and vice versa for increase exposure.

See http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php?t=5598 for resources on exposure and digital workflow.

I am looking forward to seeing more of your work.

[Jim Poor]

It has been a long time since I used my D70, but I think it has "blinky highlights." If so, you can use that function to check images after they are made to look for overexposed areas. It should be found under the view settings on the camera menu.

Take an image that really doesn't matter, check the highlights and adjust if needed. Take a few exposures until you don't get anymore (or very few) blinkies on the screen. Then leave the adjustment that way until either the subject or the lighting changes. Check periodically just to make sure you're still on the right track.

[wendell westfall]

Well, Jim, I still have the image on my card, so I checked for "blinkies" and found that some show up on the butt of the goose as Amoruso said . . . and many "blinkies" on other images, too. I'll try to get back to the same location in the next few days and try your "blinkies" suggestion as well as Amoruso's advice of "lessening the exposure by 1/3 to 2/3 stops". For an inexperienced photographer such as myself these are giant steps, probably in the dim past for many of you. Thanks for your critique . . . just I'm hoping for . . .

Wendell

[Jim Poor]

Not so distant ;) I just recently started paying attention to blinkies again. Actually Robert's suggestion on teh 1/3 to 2/3 is the way to get the exposure right. checking for blinkies is just a way to verify. If it still has blinkies, dial in more exposure comp.

[wendell westfall]

Will do . . .

Wendell

[Robert Amoruso]

I am glad Jim mentioned the blinkies, totally forgot to do that. You also want to be using the histogram. Look in the camera's manual to see how to get the Highlight Alerts turned on and how to get the histogram to display when you create an imagine.

If the Highlight Alerts are blinking and/or you see a spike on the right of the histrogram, you need to reduce the exposure using exposure compensation so as not to overexpose the highlights. Your manual should also be able to tell you how to do that. If you have any trouble, just post back here and we will help.

[wendell westfall]

After reading your posts I went out and experimented a bit with EV settings (and histogram and highlights). I see what a difference it can make! I've obviously been missing something, which I'll try to work into my photo sessions as I become more comfortable with it. Up to this point I had not used these aids at all.

Wendell