Juvenile Eagle with fish

[Kevin Giannini]

Hello,

Took this image at a lake in Wilmington, NC as we were walking around the lake - many different birds but it's the first time I saw an eagle. At least I think it's a juvenile bald eagle. I had been shooting an egret in bright sun, when my friend spotted this guy overhead and I'm afraid I underexposed a bit. But this was the last of four decent shots I got off.

Canon 5D III Canon 300mm f/4 1.4 TC (420mm) ISO 400 1/8000 f/5.6
Moderate crop. I do miss the extra reach of the 7D with the 300mm but the lens is pretty easy to hand hold. All the standard adjustments were done in LR4 plus bringing up the shadows and selective sharpening. All the other 3 images were the same sharpness but I chose this one cause you could see the branches which he was going to fly into, even though the wing position was different for each photo.
I'd love to get some suggestions, critiques on this.
Thanks!
Kevin

[Diane Miller]

I think this is wonderful! At ISO 400 with that camera, I'd be tempted to see if I could bring up a little more shadow detail on the back wing, but I sometimes get too carried away in that direction. I certainly wouldn't say it's something you need to try.

I think this is an excellent view of the bird, sharp, great detail, well-exposed. I like the crop and the trees add a very nice environmental touch.

Can't help with the ID.

[Kevin Giannini]

Thanks so much for commenting Diane, I appreciate it. I'll try to see if I can bring up the shadows a little more on the wing but I have a feeling I may introduce noise. I had had the exposure comp set way down because of the bright egret in sunlight I was shooting, hence the high shutter speed. I also meant to include above that I was shooting in AV mode.
Thank you.
Kevin

[Diane Miller]

Being able to get this from an underexposure is even more impressive! You probably weren't anticipating having a dark bird enter the action, but this is a classic case where shooting in M exposure mode could have given you a better exposure for both birds. Your exposure for the egret would have been high enough to just keep the whites from blowing out (which you could bring back to some degree in PP), and likely the dark bird would not have been underexposed. You might still have wanted to bring up some shadow detail, but probably not as much as it sounds like you had to here.

But I would never have guessed it was underexposed, so you got away with it this time.

There are plenty of situations where I shoot in Av, but for constant light on a subject, where a subject might move against lighter or darker BGs, or where you might switch from shooting a light subject to a dark one, M will let you shoot at the happy median. There is usually enough leeway in RAW conversion to expand the tonal range to accommodate the range of situations.

[Kevin Giannini]

Thanks again Diane. I most always shoot AV and one thing has always confused me. Generally, I shoot with evaluative metering and if, say, I'm shooting a dark bird in a bright sky, I will dial in positive compensation. If I'm shooting a a light bird in a generally dark background, I'll dial in negative compensation. But if I shoot manually, won't I have to make these same adjustments depending on the background/subject? I'm sure I'm not understanding something cause so many seem to use manual mode, but let's say I was shooting manually and I chose a shutter and aperture, and then went up or down with exposure compensation. Wouldn't I have to make a quick adjustment to accommodate the changing situation anyway? I know I must be missing something, perhaps it's quicker to do this in manual? I read Artie's article somewhere where he said for most situations he shoots manually, but he still shoots in AV sometimes, but it seems a quick adjustment would always be needed.
I was thinking of trying spot metering, where you meter on only the subject and hopefully it (the bird) is exposed correctly, but I never see where anyone does this. Any ideas?
And thanks again, you are very helpful, as is this site.
Kevin

[Diane Miller]

There has been a lot of discussion of M exposure here lately. Artie had a lot of information on it in two of his recent blog posts, and I'll leave details to the experts, but the short answer is with M you meter a neutral value -- often an area of the sky with birds in flight, or grass, and set a combination of the parameters (ISO, SS or aperture) to give the best exposure for that area, which for the sky will often be with the meter showing an overexposure of +1 to even +2. (The sky varies a lot, and your meter will always try to make a middle exposure.) I like to use a gray card if I have the chance, or, even as someone just said in a thread somewhere, an incident light meter will remove the estimation factor. (I'm old enough to have one, too.) But shooting between a light and a dark subject you may be taxing the tonal range of the sensor. RAW processing can usually bring that under control.

With practice and experience, using M you can quickly do any necessary tweaking with the dials but in most cases it shouldn't be necessary. Of course this assumes constant light on the subject. Basically it tells the exposure to ignore the BG. And of course you do need compensation if the light on the subject changes. If it's changing fast, Av can react much faster than I can. I sometimes shoot Great Egrets that fly into a rookery and in late afternoon light some of them fly from full sun into shade as they approach a nest tree, but with the same blue sky BG. For that, I'll go to Av because in M the birds will be underexposed as they go into the shade. I don't care if the sky becomes overexposed, and the birds are large enough in the fame that the meter will do a decent job of exposing them in both the sun and shade.

There are a lot of specialized situations and different exposure modes work in different ones. In many cases, it's simply a choice, and any of them could work equally well.

[Kevin Giannini]

Thanks for the detail Diane. I had seen Artie's article but didn't read it fully, but now I will. It's time to try something better or easier or more effective.
Do you know if many/anyone uses spot metering, especially for birds? I haven't seen where may or anyone does, so there must be a weakness to using it.
Thanks again.
Kevin

[Diane Miller]

If I remember, there are two closely related articles, I think only a few days apart, which give somewhat different sides of a complex issue.

Interesting Q about spot metering, but I think a little bit of averaging is a good idea in many cases. If using a sky, spot wouldn't be any different than evaluative unless you were very wide angle. For metering a bird itself, you would probably be best to average the area a little. Same with grass. But it could vary with the circumstances. I think many people just wouldn't want to have to change another setting, and are probably in evaluative to start with -- it is so smart these days, and does a good job of protecting highlights.

No easy answers here...

[JohanMocke]

Nice full shot!