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Thread: Stretch

  1. #1
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    Default Stretch

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    Another purple swamphen... well same purple swamphen. They have become a favourite. They can look extremely gracefull or very comical.

    I've had to try to move between the feral ducks that frequent this waterhole. Not easy. They think I'm a meal ticket. I have lots of wonderful images spoilt by the very bright white of a domestic duck in the BG. I couldn't avoid the rocks in the BG. I attempted to clone out, but too big a job for me. There was an OOF rock in the FG that I made a mess of trying to clone out. I should have left it alone.

    In ACR - Exposure to the left - just under a stop. Highlights to the left, shadows to the right. In the HSL panel , desaturated the greens and yellows, increased blues and purples a tad.
    In PSCS6 - Hue/Saturation layer. Cloned out some poo and a reed that cut through his head. Cropped and smart sharpened for posting. No BG NR.

    Canon 5D2
    Sigma 150-600mm @ 481mm
    1/320 sec @ f/8
    ISO 1000
    Spot metering
    Manual Exposure
    Tripod

    C&C Always welcomed and appreciated!

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    What a great bird! Nice sharpness and detail, and the slight head turn and the one legged pose add interest. I can also see a version with the bird less centered with some off the LHS. TFS.

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    Glennie I always find it difficult to crop a bird in this pose think you have it about right. Great thing about these birds is the size of there feet which your image shows off beautifully, feathers look good with just the right amount of sheen for my taste.

    Keith.

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    Glennie, can I ask you some real basic (maybe even dumb/obvious) questions about this photo?

    1) you took this in portrait, correct?

    2) Assume you focus point was the head/eyes? If not, where?

    3) What kind of focus metering are you using? Spot, evaluative, etc?


    I have a problem where I get focus on the head of the bird, but it's right in the middle of the frame, so I sometimes end up cutting off other parts of the picture that I don't want to. Are you moving your main focus metering point further up in the frame?

    Trying to learn what others are doing right ....


    AP

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    Unusual and very nice pose -- almost regal! Love those feet! Nice sharpness, color and detail. Looks like you're getting good initial exposure now.

    Would have been nice to get a little more head turn to separate the beak from the neck, but it can be difficult to reason with most subjects.

    Your main image here is the full 1000 pixels so ignore my mention in your previous swamphen that including the crop illustration in the same panel might have caused the main image size to be smaller.

    Andrew, a very important point. I'll let Glennie answer that but I just made some mention of it in her previous swamphen post.

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    Andrew, the only questions not asked are the dumb ones.

    1. Yes. Shot in portait
    2. I always TRY to focus on an eye. (The one closest to me)
    3. I move between spot and evaluative now. This one was in spot.

    I still have trouble getting the whole bird in the frame. I think that's why I tend to back off on the zooming. I would rather give myself a little leeway and make a crop in post rather than to cut off his toes or wings. I do know however, that the less you crop, the better the image IQ. So I am working on that. I move my FPs around all the time (depending on what the bird is doing, or if I want to change from portrait to LS) but rarely use the centre one for birds. Most birds are sort of long (like this swamphen) or horizontalish. I sometimes wonder if the outside FPs are are good as the centre one. I hope that answers your question.

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    Good thinking on the framing, Glennie. This amount of crop is quite tolerable for a good sharp capture, and it can be really hard to get a horizon level through the viewfinder.

    I like that the rocks in the BG echo the one he's standing on. I'm wondering now about just a little burn on the large one to the left.

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    Love this one, love the look although I agree with Diane that just a little more head turn would have been nice, but birds just don't take direction very well, do they!!

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