John Chardine
08-31-2011, 06:44 PM
The shorebirds have been in full migration so I took advantage of a good local spot today. I love this time of year. This is a Least Sandpiper making its way down to South America. I only have the one lens right now (burglary) so the 70-300L is keeping me honest. I had to work hard to belly-up to this bird. The depth of field was such that the habitat elements are pretty obvious here and my excuse is that I want to show how well these birds blend in. Minutes before I saw a Peregrine Falcon pass by and of course a standard way prey avoid being eaten is to be cryptic.
High tide is the best time to see the birds but this occurred at 1300h today and it was sunny. I had to make the best of a difficult lighting situation so I used my flash (sans beamer, also stolen and not yet replaced) and tried to fill the shadows the best I could. Processing was bog-standard. Image was cropped to about 40% of original size. There was detail lurking in the eye which I brought out with a little dodging. Comments welcome.
Model: Canon EOS-1D Mark IV
Lens: EF70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM, @ 300 mm handheld (the tripod collar for this lens is not available yet)
Program: Manual
ISO 800, 1/2000s, f/7.1
Exp. comp.: 0.0
Flash: on, Flash exp. comp.: 0.0
High tide is the best time to see the birds but this occurred at 1300h today and it was sunny. I had to make the best of a difficult lighting situation so I used my flash (sans beamer, also stolen and not yet replaced) and tried to fill the shadows the best I could. Processing was bog-standard. Image was cropped to about 40% of original size. There was detail lurking in the eye which I brought out with a little dodging. Comments welcome.
Model: Canon EOS-1D Mark IV
Lens: EF70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM, @ 300 mm handheld (the tripod collar for this lens is not available yet)
Program: Manual
ISO 800, 1/2000s, f/7.1
Exp. comp.: 0.0
Flash: on, Flash exp. comp.: 0.0