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Thread: Eider

  1. #1
    BPN Member William Dickson's Avatar
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    Default Eider

    Attached Images Attached Images
     
    Canon 7D
    Canon F/2.8 300mm with 1x4 TC
    f/7.1
    1/1000
    ISO 640

    Cropped and sharpened in CS6

    Captured this Eider Duck in Kirkcaldy Harbour, Fife, Scotland on a winters evening when the sun was low in the sky

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    White balance looks off, lots of noise in the black feathers and water possibly from over-sharpening, looks out of focus also.

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    Nice head turn, eye contact and excellent light.
    I don't see any noise mentioned earlier.
    Also I don't seem to recognize that the white balance is off which was also mentioned.
    Let's have some others comment on this issues.

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    I wouldn't say the white balance is off, it appears to be warm from the evening light. I also think this gives a slight color cast to the black areas, which is fine to my eyes. I also think the subject is in focus, note the chest, neck, whispy white wing feather and eye, they all appear to be on the focal plane. The tip of the bill is soft, but it's also off plane as the head is slightly turned.

    That said, the bird does appear soft, perhaps from a combination of N/R and lack of edge detail due to light angle?

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    With their high contrastwhite to black plumage, eiders are not easy to expose properly especially indirect sun. Your image looks very good to my eyes and the exposure wascertainly helped by the setting sun. The dark eye on the dark face also is an achievement and you have excellent detail on the front chest feathers.It's a good one William!

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  9. #6
    Macro and Flora Moderator Jonathan Ashton's Avatar
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    I like the lighting and the pose. My only suggestion would be to lift the darkest plumage, it appears just a little too dark to me.

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    Super Moderator Daniel Cadieux's Avatar
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    I also took the WB as being correctly warm from the low light...and looking good. The only thing to me, as per Jonathan, is that the blacks are very dark and could use some lifting of the shadows if not too hard on the noise with the 7D. A lower angle if at all possible would have been nice too, but I like the texture of the water with this slightly elevated vantage point.

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    Lifetime Member gail bisson's Avatar
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    I like the image but wish for a lot more detail in the blacks and a bit more on the whites.
    It is very hard with the 7D to properly expose for black and white birds because of the limited tonal range. But it can be done as Daniel keeps showing us.
    You have exposed for the whites in this image but the sunset light, while beautiful, was not your friend in helping expose the blacks.
    If you haven't worked on the blacks at all in this image, I would go to photoshop and use the shadows and highlight tool then go to detail extractor and see if you can get more details out of the blacks,
    Gail

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    Very nice image and I love the colors and textures in the water! But it is very dark for my tastes.

    Shadows-Highlights and Detail Extractor in PS can do a lot, but you are stuck with the limited tonal range that came in from the Raw converter. It's glued into the file. Best to pull out as much as you can in Raw and then darken the darks as needed in PS -- you can't lighten darks or reduce contrast in PS nearly as effectively as you can go the other way.

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