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Canon Rebel xti
Canon 100-400mm 5.6L is USM
Canon 1.4x teleconverter
560mm max focal length
ISO 800
F13
1/4000 sec
Manual Exposure
I used the tips I received from Bill and Julie in the Eager to Learn forum and went back and tried to film the Spoonie again. I think their tips worked particularly shooting at faster film speeds and improving the HA.
Jay
Jay; certainly a remarkable improvement! You nailed the exposure, and although the light is high contrast, the sun must have been pretty low on the horizon and at your back, exactly what was needed.
The spoonbill is too tight in the frame, and although you can't see the feet it is a good idea to leave space for them anyway. In other words you clipped the "virtual feet" and need to include space as if you could actually see them. I'm not sure why this works, but it does!!
Now about ISO. The general rule is to use as low an ISO as possible (down to ISO 200) while maintaining proper shutter-speed and aperture. The higher the ISO, the more digital noise becomes a problem. Generally, as in this image, noise effects the background more than anything else. There are perfectly adequate methods in dealing with this in post-processing. Nonetheless, avoiding post processing solutions saves time, and ISO 400 might have worked better and the 1/4000 sec SS dropped a bit since it is overkill. 1/1600-1/2000 sec, I would guess, would produce the same results.
regards~Bill
regards~Bill
Good improvements in relation to the first. I second William's comments about the tightness. You should also consider running some noise reduction on the background. You could have have dropped a stop with the aperture/ or even the shutter speed and then gone down to ISO 400, which would have given better noise performance on the rebel.
Nice that you have such nice birds close by to go and practice on.
F/13? I don't think you need a lot of depth of field for this image. May be 5.6 or 6.3? by doing this you can also gain some shutter speed. Nice bird and pose, details on flank are very nice.
Canon Rebel xti
Canon 100-400mm 5.6L is USM
ISO 400
F8
1/4000 sec
Manual Exposure
The following was taken about 2 frames before my previous post I had not added the 1.4 Teleconverter at this point.
So the virtual feet are shown here as I am technically 160mm farther standing at the same spot. at F8 i do not have much noise although the BG in the upper right is not that great. There were weeds that I was trying to blemish out.
So do you think this is a better choice in terms of subject positioning and technical settings than the first?
Hi Jay; this is better choice for a number of reasons, including the subject being less tight in the frame, and having the virtual feet un-clipped. The biggest improvement, to me at least, is you not using the tele-converter, and a noticeable increase in image quality. F8, as opposed to F13, is a better choice as well, which allows a burring of the background more the first image.
You did really well, now what you need to try is capturing one of these guys on a cloudy or overcast day! regards~Bill
Thanks Bill. So you think I should lose the telconverter all together, huh?
Jay; no, I don't think you should lose it. There will be situations when you absolutely need it for a particular shot, when there is no other option. It is like the way I look at ISO 1600, I would rather not, but there are times I have no choice. I realize that image quality will take a hit, not only because of digital noise (having to resort to noise reduction always reduces detail), but a reduction in dynamic range. Nonetheless, if I use a lower ISO, I need to drop the shutter-speed, which very often cause a much a more serious image degredation problem.
One more thing, if you ever get a hold of something like a 300mm F2.8, you may hardly ever shoot without it.
regards~Bill
