Bad light/background but is there hope - Russet-backed Oropendola
Canon 5D III f/7 300 f/2.8+1.4 -1/3 ISO640 shutter 1/560
I just looked over all the recent posts and there is nothing to critique, the images are too good. So that is where I come in...
The top was overexposed and the bottom underexposed and still is I suppose but I corrected that as best I could. A post with some similar background issues had several people saying 'tone it down' and I wonder how to do that.
I like the photo because of good feather detail and it is the best I have of this species, but wonder what the post processing experts would do here.
A new species for me! Cool-looking bird for sure. I agree with your self critique. I could suggest fill-flash, and I'd prefer a looser crop. I'd like to see the un-editted version too....
Had I been photographing birds at the banana tree I would have used the 2x which works well with 2.8 lens with sunlight and would have positioned myself differently for the background. However they didnīt come when I was ready, and this one came very close just one time to tease and frustrate me.
So there is a little of shadow/highlights for the bottom of bird and some direct editting of the overexposed top.
Difficult one to crop. The first is a little big in the fame in my humble opinion, with the bird looking " out" of the shot. To sort that would mean taking out the branch on the left and a fair bit of cloning. I like the background on the first one.
Thanks for reposting the unedited version. From the looks of it some fill-flash would have been your best with those blacks as you have pretty much exposed best you could without blowing out the bill. The background was mottled a lot to begin with so it is a chore to tame it. With a setup you could place the perch much further from the BG to help with that in camera. The repost also shows me that you had a better cropping alterantive...keeping the canvas above to include the fork in the branch and also keeping the rest at right.
Hi, Tom. Some good suggestions already. I certainly agree on the fill-flash. Your exposure on the bird looks fine to me as there's nothing wrong with shadowing on the underside of the bird, particularly soft shadows as you have here. Nonetheless, fill-flash would have allowed you to underexpose the background a bit (thus de-emphasizing it some) and open up the shadows on the bird just slightly (probably flash exposure compensation around TTL -2 would do the trick).
The other thing I would have done is to open up the aperture. I think f/5.6 would have given you plenty of depth of field on the bird, and I probably would have considered shooting wide open at f/4, which would really help to de-emphasize the background.
Daniel's suggestion on increasing perch to background distance are right on if you have control of that.
In the end, though, some shadows on your subject and a bit of texture in BGs are not bad things. A bit of fill-flash and a wider aperture would help you to preserve subtle shadowing on the bird and keep some BG texture while focusing the viewer's eye on your subject.
Thanks everyone. Since I overexposed the top and underexposed the bottom it think I would have had to be really precise with the fill flash settings to get that right (give me a few more years), and Iīll study recropping.
No one recommended 'toning down' the background as they did in another post, and I was interested in how that discussion would go..
Greg, we met at Hacienda Baru years ago, nice to run into you again,
Last edited by Tom Friedel; 01-02-2014 at 04:26 PM.
Hi, Tom. Actually, you exposed this picture well. The fill-flash would only open up the shadows; it wouldn't overpower the stronger natural light coming from above. I haven't been back to Baru in years. Maybe I'll get there again one of these days.
Bad light/background but is there hope - Russet-backed Oropendola
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