Mule deer in AZ

[Stan Cunningham]

I'm posting this here as I still need all the feedback I can get as a newbie.
I was fortunate to get close, the 100 mm lens is not a mistake, as he was chasing does and no interest in me.
Canon 7D, 100mm 2.8L IS, F 3.2, 1/200, ISO 500. I wish I had the 70-200mm at this time, which I purchased after chasing deer in low light. I have a decent crop of head as well.
Nothing I could do about how wet he was as the snow was covering the Junipers we were running though and melting.
Thanks for comments.
Stan

[Julie Kenward]

Stan, it looks like the most helpful thing I could tell you about this is with the exposure. With all that overexposed snow behind you and the dark color of the deer in the FG, I'm guessing you had to do quite a bit of lightening up on this image in post-processing. There's a tremendous amount of noise in the darker areas of the BG and most of the whites have no detail left. The fact that you got that much of the deer in focus with an f-stop of 3.2 is also slightly amazing.

When you have lots of snow on the ground the camera will want to underexpose the image (because it is trying to turn the bright white to middle gray.) You have to compensate for that by overexposing the image or using flash in order to get the image to balance out. If you want to practice this some time get yourself a big old tree that has bright sun behind it and try taking a few exposures. You'll soon see that it takes much more compensation than you would think to balance out the dark tree.

Other than exposure, the subject is only partially in the image - something we don't usually recommend unless you're going for that tight head image. I realize this was a "grab and go" image so I'd take the lessons you learned from it and move on. The next deer that comes your way may give you a chance to consider your lighting/exposure and his position within the frame and then you'll truly have a keeper on your hands.

[Stan Cunningham]

First, I knew about the noise but I still have problems recognizing overblown highlights without the alert on in my camera. And I did push that one 2 stops but glad I posted it so I keep getting reminded to look. Just too new to be critical enough so thanks, and for the length of your comments as well.
The exposure thing is still difficult for me and I've done quite a bit of reading but still confused. I get very humbled when some participants talk about taking pics in manual. I can do it with water birds some times, and bif with no background but that seems to be the only time it works for me. Once birds start jumping around from branch to branch, or deer running from tree to tree it's back to Aper pri for me.
You nailed it with this as a jump and go with the truck door open, and I'll admit to some buck fever because he's so large. However, I did the only thing I really know how to do at my stage, Take a pic, look for the highlight alerts and try to rectify. I've posted the next pic, same f stop at 1/200, I misposted above as that was 1/640. But as you will notice the snow is still "blown out" and his color is perfect. This new pic has no post processing at all.
I"m up for any advice as to what to do with changing backgrounds and light conditions. But as I said the only thing that seems to work for me at this stage is take a pic, and check the highlight alert. Any blinkies and back it down. I can do the same with histograms but like the alerts better.
Thanks again for your informative post.

[Sid Garige]

Stan,

We all start at the same place and pick up stuff on the way. When I started 5 years back I produced many not so perfect images. We learn from our mistakes and we will continue to do things better. I am sure next time you will be paying more attention to blinkies and may be pick up a thing or two about histogram. Understanding the histogram is very important in understanding exposure theory. Looking forward to seeing more images.

That is a dandy buck. I photographed mule deer in Montana, Wyoming and Colorado but not in Arizona. Would love to get there someday to photograph birds at Gilbert Water Ranch.

-Sid

[Cody Covey]

We all start somewhere, just keep at it. I'm pretty new as well and know what you mean about the difficulty with exposure. The blown snow doesn't bother me nearly as much as the noise. I would take that through your favorite editor and try and get rid of most of it although I think with that level of noise you won't be able to get rid of all of it without also making the image a bit flat.

[Stan Cunningham]

Thanks Cody,
I didn't really even notice the noise as much when it was a tiff. As soon as I reduced it and posted it I thought it looked bad.
That was a pretty large crop, the raw image, photo 2, is not near as bad and I'm just going to do a much smaller crop.
I've decided I'm just going to shoot manual for a while until I get it down. Trying to get out for at least an hour 3 to 4 times a week and shoot some birds just to get used to it. If I blow a shot big deal, at least I'm learning.