Sea otter with pup

[Milo Burcham]

Today over the lunch break I found this cooperative mother with a new born pup!

Camera Model: Canon EOS 5D
Date/Time: 2008:01:10 13:28:43
Shutter speed: 1/1000 sec
Aperture: 5.6
Exposure mode: Av
Flash: Off
Metering mode: Evaluative
Drive mode: Continuous: frame 1
ISO: 800
Lens: EF600mm f/4L IS USM +1.4x
Focal length: 840mm
AF mode: AI Servo AF
Image size: 4368 x 2912
Image quality: Raw
White balance: Auto

Sea otter with pup
Prince William Sound, Alaska

[Steve Foss]

Beautiful pose in this portrait, Milo. The comp looks just right to me, and I love how the alert/alarmed expression on the adult is echoed in the pup. This is a real winner that could use just a few tweaks in the pp department to help it be its best.

If I had to guess, I'd say this capture was a bit underexposed and the noise in the adult's coat popped out when it was brightened in pp, since even at iso800 the 5D's native noise performance is excellent. A lassoing of the dark portions of the adult's pelt and application of noise reduction would handle that pretty well, I think. The adult's face might benefit from a touch of selective sharpening as well.

[Bonnie Block]

Awesome image here, Milo. Just some more pp as noted and it is a winner.

[Ian McHenry]

Beautiful image.
Slight midtone darkening could be worth looking at.

[Dave Courtenay]

I have photographed these guys many times in California and its very unusual to see them out of the water, This is a great image, To have a mum and pup and snow-wow I would love to have this one on file

[Jacqui Hendry]

Wow,

Such expressions how cute

I really think that I need to go to the States for a holiday one day soon .... :-)

Jacqui

[D. Robert Franz]

Hi Milo, great to see you here. This is a very strong image. Tenderness is the story told. A little pp work as mentioned above would be nice but overall I would love to have it myself...

[Stephen Stephen]

Great family image here Milo. A very tender scene with the mother's front leg cuddling the baby.

[Pete Woods]

This is a stunning capture with both looking at camera.

[Milo Burcham]

Thanks for the comments. The original exposure was just about right for the whites, but to bring out a little better detail in the darks I used the Shadow Tool (CS2) at about +20, thus the noise. I'll have to go back and use less of the Shadow tool, or try Noise Ninja or similar program. After reading the first comments, I did try some noise reduction in PS but saw little effect. Is Noise ninja better?

Frankly, ISO 800 was a mistake from shooting swans in a snowstorm the day before! ISO 400 or so would have been fine!!!

[Steve Foss]

Noise Ninja is much better than CS2. You can google it and go to their site, buy it and download it right there, as well as download and install custom profiles for your camera.

[Robert Smith]

What a lunch break! Congrats on a very cute capture. Well done.

[Milo Burcham]

Sorry for milking this one, but, I particularly like the image and want to get it right. Here is a repost of the same image, simply without using the shadow tool to open up the darks. The original histogram shows the darks well off the left side of the histogram, yet with little detail in the darkest portions. Hope this looks better. I might still try opening up the darks and then reducing noise using Noise Ninja.

[Pete Woods]

That looks a tad warmer (good thing) and mum's coat has a better look :)

[Steve Foss]

I like it. The darks look a lot better to me. How about open up the darks, run noise ninja and then pull them back down again a bit. I think the darks will look even better then. Just a thought.