LESSON - SUNNY SIXTEEN RULE

[gary ellwein]

A Loggerhead shrike captured using the sunny 16 rule. Late afternoon on a clear day with frontal lighting. Manual mode, opened up three stops to f5.6. At iso 200 reduced shutter speed three stops to 1/1600. Matrix metering with Ev 0. Beanbag on pickup window. D200, Nikkor 200-400mm with 1.4 TC, focal length 550mm. The cameras exposure meter zeroed out with these settings. Crop 25-30 % of original. Photoshop- cloned out branch transecting tail and additional bg branches, minor levels adj., minor color balance and hue/sat to darken sky. Selective USM. C & C appreciated.

[Joel Eade]

HI gary,

To me the exposure looks pretty good but the image overall looks noisy especially the background but even the bird is suffering some loss of detail, maybe due to the crop being too much, I'm not sure.

Sounds like you had a good rest for the camera and plenty of shutter speed.

The pose is nice but you may get some critique for the head angle being slightly away from the palne of the sensor.

Joel

[gary ellwein]

Joel, thanks for the prompt response. Applied bg noise reduction.and the image looks better.

[Lance Peters]

Hi Gary - exposure looks good - sounds like you have the idea!
Repost does look better. HA does look like it could be a little off, I also wonder if it may not have worked better as a horizontal rather than vertical. Detail looks good.
Keep em coming.

[John Chardine]

Nice to see this declining species Gary. Agree with the above comments. Repost is an improvement. Although I agree the "rule" worked well, overall the image looks a little dark on my monitor. I tried a boost in the mid-tones in Levels and it seemed to work.