upupa

[Giovanni Frescura]

Canon Mark IV
Canon 300 f.2,8 + extender 1x4
Manual setting
1/1600
f.4
iso 2000

[Randy Stout]

Giovanni:

Love the chick out the nest hole, with wide open, feed me look.

Eye contact between the two great, prey item, crest on adult, dorsal view, all good.

I am not seeing any detail in the whites on the wings, appears sig. overexposed there. A challenge to meter this one, rather like doing the loons against a very dark background. It is very hard to hold the whites and yet show any detail in the darks.

Both of the birds heads could stand a bit more sharpening to my eye.

Cheers

Randy

[Giovanni Frescura]

The problem with this type of shooting and 'I did not have time and space to focus on the parent who suddenly appears in a small space.
So I can not use the servo cause no time physically coupling.
Then use one shoot or by taking a point on the small and hoping that the parent holding arrivals on the same axis or, as in this case, use fixed-focus but not with single point (obviously not central but decentralized) but with all taking as reference points the beak of the small and trying to avoid the lowest point 'is near the "container".
The background is natural without any retouching.
I have trouble with light ..
So, on average, are ISO 2000/1600 f 4 (1x4 duplicator having the maximum aperture) and speed 'more' high as possible consistent with the light ... from 1250 to 2000 (but do not seem to move and more 'what else have a frantic fluttering of wings).
Problems:
background too dark
little or almost no depth 'field
white wings curiously devoid of detail - from opening checking raw did not have to make any recovery and thus does not seem overexposed .. but the detail is not there (on the subject plus I just read a riduzioe noise and then I should not have taken nothing fundamental)
Have tips?
Thanks

[Randy Stout]

Giovanni:

Many challenges here, as you mentioned.

I do think prefocusing manually is your best choice, you will miss many due to different angles to the nest and such, but with time you should hit some good ones.

I would certainly consider fill flash to give you more flexibility on your aperture selection, with this background, clutter from greater DOF isn't an issue.

The whites on the posted image were overexposed when I looked at them in CS5. May have suffered in the jpeg conversion process.

Perhaps Alan Murphy or some of the folks who specialize in this type of photography will chime in.

Cheers

Randy

[Pete Riola]

I agree with Randy. Did you run some NR on this image? That said this scene you have is really cool and worth working at every chance.

[Giovanni Frescura]

Hello Pete
What means NR ?
I tried again yesterday in the afternoon some other shoots and I used prefocus and the MF and all was better.
Then I used also better beamer...and now it is not perfect (off couse) but a step on...

[Randy Stout]

giovanni:

NR is noise reduction, which can reduce fine detail if not selectively applied.

Glad you made some progress. It will take a lot of work, but your setup has a lot of neat aspects, and a great looking bird, so worth it, I think.

Look forward to more !

Randy

[Pete Riola]

I think if you do some noise reduction your image will be better. Like Randy said use the NR for specifics. I see most of the noise in the darks and in the background which is not uncommon. You have a great situation there keep shooting!

I reworked it with some nr but I don't see how to post that here?