Surf Scoter

[Grant Yang]

Granted not my best work, but no response on the ETL forum so I'll try to post a better one here. Surf scoter drake taken at Shoreline Park in Mountain View. I tried to get as low to the water as possible, and framed through the tilting lcd.



Camera: SONY
Model: SLT-A77V
ISO: 160
Exposure: 1/500 sec
Aperture: 5.6
Focal Length: 400mm
Flash Used: No

CC welcome. Thanks for viewing.

[dankearl]

Grant,
Your shooting angle is excellent and you have a gorgeous BG and nice light.
The bird is soft, not sure where your focus was.
I don't know about your Sony, but they make excellent sensors for other brands.
1/500 should have been enough but I would still Raise the ISO to 400 and shoot much faster.
You may just have motion blur and a faster SS would help a lot.
Looking forward to more.

[MohsenVahedipour]

Very lovely species. I like the sharpness & nice low shooting angle. Very pleasant colors in the BG. If it were mine, I would crop a bit from the bottom & place the bird more to the left. Also try to bring out some more details from the darker parts of the feathers.

[arash_hazeghi]

I like the MV shoreline park a lot!

Nice low angle and light, I agree the bird is a bit soft and blacks have lost detail. It looks like the image was underexposed and some parts fell in the shade, so it will be difficult to bring up detail without adding noise.

[gail bisson]

You have beautiful light and a great BG. You are on the right track!
I shoot at ISO 800 80% of the time which gives you a lot more leeway to set SS and DOF. This is a tricky bird to expose for because the whites can be easily blown out if you expose for the blacks. This is where a camera with a good dynamic range can really help out.
You have gotten some good advice already so I will not repeat.
Gail

[Grace Scalzo]

Techs have been well covered. I might suggest that you play with the composition as the duck is quite centered both horizontally and vertically in your frame. If you scroll back through this forum, there have been some nice ducks posted this past fall from which you may gain some ideas. Love the light!

[Marina Scarr]

You have an absolutely LOVELY image here. Super subject...killer BG & FG. You got yourself nice and low and there's a nice angle on your duck. Your biggest problem is your bird is not as sharp as it needs to be and is a little big underexposed. If it were sharp and shot in RAW, you could probably bring back some of the details in the blacks b/c you were at such a low ISO. Not sure what kind of noise (grain) this Sony camera produces, but you could probably have photographed with an ISO of at least 400.

Try to focus on the bird eye while you are photographing. If your eye is sharp, you'll be happy with your image.

Keep 'em coming.

[Grant Yang]

Thanks for the incredibly helpful suggestions everyone. I tried to implement some of the suggestions as best I could. Let me know how I did.

A comment many of you made (and correctly so) was that the original image was underexposed and slightly soft. Of course all of you are correct, but there are some niggles that need explaining. When I took it, the jpeg preview exposure and sharpness looked fine. In Lightroom with all defaults to zero, the image is indeed very underexposed. This is typical of almost all the shots I've taken with the a77. I'm not sure if it's a LR conversion problem, or a camera metering problem. I've always wondered which one I should trust, the jpeg preview, or overexpose so that it looks right in LR.

Without further ado, here's the straight conversion in LR.



I brought up the exposure slightly further in LR, and adjusted the crop to place the bird further off center. I also leveled the horizon (the electronic level doesn't seem to be entirely accurate, although it's usually much worse when I forget to use it).



The LR settings I changed:

Exp: +.5
Recovery: 43
Fill Light: 25
_____________
Brightness: 58
Contrast: 30
_____________
Clarity: 31
Vibrance: 15
Saturation: 5
_____________
Highlights: -5
Lights: -5
Darks: +10
Shadows: +5
_____________
Sharpening:
Amount: 36
Radius: 1.5
Detail: 63
Masking:0

I was unhappy that I'd lost some of the vibrant colors in the foreground and background, and the whole bird was looking a little flat, so I did a little more work in PSE.



I extracted the bird as a separate layer, and applied max NR to the layer below. I used the adjust sharpness tool (84%, radius .4) to sharpen the image. I then darkened the highlights 20%, pushed the shadows 10%, and raised midtone contrast 10%, and selectively sharpened the eye.

I thought the bird looked a little bit too bright and flat in this version. Also, the noise in the bird was starting to be a problem, so I went back and pulled the shadows back.

Here's the final version.


In the future, I'm going to have to be more careful about keeping up my shutter speeds. Unfortunately, the a77 is blessed with one of the noisiest sensors of modern times. My usual default is to sacrifice shutter speed in return for lower iso's, cleaner images, and more DR. I rapidly lose my ability to crop into my 24 megapixels once I get above iso 400.

Once again, thanks to everybody for their helpful suggestions.

[gail bisson]

Hi Grant,
The repost is a HUGE improvement. Congrats!
A couple of things-
1. it is worthwhile paying the 25.00 to be a member because your pics will get way more traffic (aka views) if the thumbnail of your picture shows on the opening page.
2. I know nothing about Sony but it is clear that your JPEG preview is off. I would use the histogram only, to make sure you are exposing to the right as much as possible. I know that on my Canon I can customize the amount of contrast, sharpness seen on the JPEG. While on my workshop to Alaska, I underexposed a lot of pics because somehow I had custom changed my JPEG settings to a +3 contrast which falsely told me I had lots of blinkies (or overexposed areas). I would take a pic, see lots of blinkies ( instead of really looking at the histogram) and reduce my exposure via SS or aperture till the blinkies were gone. When I got home after the first day and loaded images on the IPAD I was shocked and could not figure out why I was so underexposed.Took a lot of digging but I eventually figured it out. My custom settings are now contrast -1.
Anyway, back to your picture
The comp is so much better and your have improved the blacks but they have become "pale" which is the price you have to pay for underexposing.
I look forward to you getting out there again and getting it right,
Gail

[Arthur Morris]

All have a huge, actually garish, yellow color cast. I love this species. That is a large crop. I did a ton for the repost: corrected color cast. Darkened pupil. Sharpened the face and bill. Cropped from below and rear. Detail Extractor on the bright WHITEs. Maybe more???

[Arthur Morris]

Also took the blue out of the white patch on the back of the head....

[Grant Yang]

Also took the blue out of the white patch on the back of the head....

Thanks for the repost. I like your version a lot. It seems to me you've dropped the black levels almost to where they were originally? Did you disagree with the many comments suggesting that I needed to bring them up significantly, or was it due to a matter of choosing between the lesser of evils? Bring them up and the bird looks flat, keep them dark, and there's less feather detail. Just wanted to know your thinking.

I like the image without the yellow cast a little bit better. I should note that the actual light conditions were probably very yellow as originally shown since it was late in the day.

[Arthur Morris]

Thanks for the repost. I like your version a lot. It seems to me you've dropped the black levels almost to where they were originally? Did you disagree with the many comments suggesting that I needed to bring them up significantly, or was it due to a matter of choosing between the lesser of evils? Bring them up and the bird looks flat, keep them dark, and there's less feather detail. Just wanted to know your thinking.

I like the image without the yellow cast a little bit better. I should note that the actual light conditions were probably very yellow as originally shown since it was late in the day.

With a very large crop you are not gonna get a lot of feather detail in the blacks. If I had the original I would try some NIK Detial Exractor but only a tiny bit. As for the yellow cast, it looks pretty nauseating from this end :).

ps: All that I did was balance the color. We should have a video tutorial out next week on the new method that I used.....

[Grant Yang]

Tried to combine what Arthur did with my version. I removed some of the yellow tint, but left it a little warmer to reflect the light conditions. Also instead of completely correcting the blue color cast in the white patch on the back of the scoter's head, I reduced saturation slightly. Because the main light is war, I do expect a little bit of blue in the shadows. I also included Arthur's suggestion about the pupil, but with a slightly smaller diameter. I did a little recovery in the shadows, but not so much to make the image look flat. Let me know what you think. Thanks.

[Arthur Morris]

The repost is a huge improvement form the original post. Good job on the pupil; I knew that I had overdone it :). My only problem with the repost is that it looks a bit bright overall but there is always some variation in brightness from monitor to monitor. All in all, well done. Since you are open to learning we would love to have your membership support.