Cardinal
Does the exposure look ok with the snow back ground? I exposed for the bird and let the snow fall where ever it did. Should I have lowered the highlights on a different layer of the snow to bring it in more? Thanks
_61A8579-Edit by rgollar, on Flickr
Canon 7dm2
400mm f/5.6l
f5.6
1/1000 sec
iso 1600
Exposure and detail on the bird looks excellent to me. I would remove the dark mark near the lower right.
The snow is a nice setting for the bird but a little more detail in it would be nice, if there is information in the raw file. What was your raw processing? There is often tremendous leeway with proper processing, but if the exposure for the snow was too high it could be beyond recovery.
Great catch on the dark mark in the lower right did not even notice it. My process is I open the raw file in ddp4 and convert to a tiff file with Arash settings from his guide. The snow was so blown due to exposing for the bird. So I lowered the highlights and raise the shadows some. Then ran thru. a noise reduction in neat image. Then a little sharpening and resized the photo and saved as a jpg from photoshop. I could do a multiply on just the snow and that usually can help bring the white back some detail. I just dont think it would help because it was so blown out. Over all I am happy with the image I just do not know how to expose for the bird and not blow out the snow unless a flash is used.
It would be interesting to see if the additional leeway afforded by Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom's Develop module (same conversion engine) would allow recovery of more highlight detail in the snow. (There is a hint of some.) I don't shoot against snow often but find the leeway I have in LR gives me a welcome ability to recover some shadow detail and thus allows me to not have to expose quite as far to the right (expose for shadows) as otherwise I would.
There is some noise in the 7D2 at ISO 1600 that will be brought out if the darker tones are brought up, so I certainly don't want to go very far with that aspect. But noise reduction software in PS can help quite a bit.
Once the tonalities of the snow are cemented into a TIFF file (same for a .psd) there is much less option to recover detail than there is in the raw file.
Richard, Diane,
Greetings. Happened to see this while thinking about headroom. There is some detail in the jpeg...
I used Silver Efex Pro to convert to monochrome, used the detailing tools (structure) to bring out the edge detail in the whites and whites contrast to bring them out more. Blended back color with luminosity blend (Photoshop) and masked to blend just the snow back to the original (Photoshop). A similar sort of thing could be done with a monochrome conversion in PS then precise curves adjustments to add contrast to the whites instead of the SEP step.
I imagine there is even more headroom using RAW conversion as Diane suggests. But maybe there is just enough detail in the jpeg info if enhanced.
Otherwise, the color and feather detail in this image rocks. Good show!
Cheers,
-Michael-
That edit gives the snow a little more pop so its not so bland. Very nice and I see you got rid of the dark spot.Originally Posted by Michael Gerald-Yamasaki
Richard, Diane,
Greetings. Happened to see this while thinking about headroom. There is some detail in the jpeg...
I used Silver Efex Pro to convert to monochrome, used the detailing tools (structure) to bring out the edge detail in the whites and whites contrast to bring them out more. Blended back color with luminosity blend (Photoshop) and masked to blend just the snow back to the original (Photoshop). A similar sort of thing could be done with a monochrome conversion in PS then precise curves adjustments to add contrast to the whites instead of the SEP step.
I imagine there is even more headroom using RAW conversion as Diane suggests. But maybe there is just enough detail in the jpeg info if enhanced.
Otherwise, the color and feather detail in this image rocks. Good show!
Cheers,
-Michael-
This is an improvement, but you could do so much better by going back to the raw file and processing with Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw. You have much more leeway in both lights and darks there.
Here's a very simple tutorial:
http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...tail-in-whites
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