MOTIF: Hunting
Out on the river as usual. Handheld from the kayak.....
Nikon D80
70-300 VR @ 270mm
1/500 @ f/6.3
Cropped to a pano, and cloned out some flotsam in the background.... Burned in the foreground stem floating on the water to bring down the highlights a little.
Amy D.
Hi Amy,
I like the pano composition. We will not tell the HA police this time. because this is a great habitat capture of the subject hunting; concentrated on his soon to be meal...;) I like it. You might want to tame down the whites if possible, they look a little hot and also clone out the small lily pad leaf thats touching his rear...:eek::o.
All in all Lady Amy, you did very good...proud of you...:D:cool:
Hi amy - agree with gus on this one - should be OK with the HAP. There's not much in those whites to get back - had a quick try with a multiply layer - but couldn't get anything.
Amy - do you have your overexposure blinkies turned on??
Well,blinkies or not, unfortunately, most birds don't stop to make sure the first shot was on the money.
I seem to be seeing consistent advice that it's better to err on the side of over exposure, and try to recover the whites, rather than going under.... So, that is what I tried to do.
Here's the histogram from the original RAW file. On the river, seeing the data piling up on the left side, I felt it might be worth having to recover a little to avoid underexposure. I grew up learning to slightly under-expose (with negative film), and that seems to be my habit that I'm trying to break. Maybe I'm over-compensating.
Amy D.
Yes, Gus - it appears we have 2 birds in this shot - one seems to be a goose! :)Originally Posted by Gus Cobos
I'm sure that will confuse several of our members unfamiliar with American idioms! ("goose" might be in some dictionaries as a verb....)
I think that I am going to start taking a film camera along with me once I get my new lens... I am curious to see the difference in the ranges under the same circumstances..... I bet I can pick up a good Nikon film camera on consignment that my lenses will fit.... I have a Nikon Coolscan film scanner - hmmmmmm. Sounds like a project. :)
Amy
Over And Under
I like the image, and everything has been covered, but I was under the impression that it was better to err on the side of underexposure. To me at least, blown out whites are virtually impossible to salvage, whereas I've been able to get quite a bit of detail from severly underexposed portions of an image. Of course noise has to be dealt with, not insurmountable. I grew up using Kodachrome 64, which likes underexposure, and I too may have a habit I may need to break.
Hi Amy - The overexposure method you mention does work very well, however IMHO you need to be very well versed with your camera and how it works under all situations - so that you dont end up with blown whites that cannot be recovered.
In a previous post Doug mentioned that He uses this method - but does not overxpose more than +.3 of stop, that would tend to indicate to me that any more than this and you are not going to be able to recover anything.
Maybe someone with more P.S. skills than me can give it a go - but as I said I tried a multiply layer and a linear burn layer and there was no detail in the whites to recover. You could just darken them.
:)
Hi WIlliam,
From what I understand, with digital, if you look at the histogram, the sensor has a higher sample rate in the tones to the right of center than to the left. So, if you slightly over-expose (preferably without clipping), you have more data to work with when post processing. I've posited this several times in threads before inviting anyone who will to correct me if I'm mistaken - and so far no one has chimed in to dispute it.
I know clipping is a lack of any data at all, but if you look at my histogram, in my mind, I was thinking "ooooh - it's all on the left side".
I believe I need to start simply thinking "grey card" and stop looking exactly at the histogram, because I am not interpreting it correctly. (yes, I know, "blinkies" are hard to misinterpret.)
I believe I was also using matrix metering for this, and have only just noticed that since I shot this, and changed to spot metering, which is something I used to rely on with my (very) old film camera. In fact, I did better with my Nikkormat after its meter died than I am doing with my D80. :(
I'll figure it out sooner or later.
:)
Amy
Hey Lance,
For the fun of it I dropped the exposure in Lightroom by 4 stops, and the clipping is STILL there. Everything is dark, but the white stripe glows like someone painted it using reflective paint from the highway stripes.... I need a Da-Glo setting on my D80!
Interesting.
Hi Amy - yes - just over exposed too much.
My understanding is - Yes you want to push the histogram towards the right - But also at the same time - YOU DONT want your data stacking up on the right side - once you have this happening, you have whites with no detail. Just a little and YES you can recover some detail via PS with a multipy/linear burn layer.
But once the whites are totally blown - theres no way to get them back.
P.S. - I could be wrong - thats just how I undertand it.
:)
And that's why the blown highlights occupy only a small area of your photo.
You want a digital SLR that has a wider dynamic range? Get a Fuji S5. Or if you can afford it, a D3, which has a dynamic range almost as good as a S5, according to dpreview. But a Fuji is much, much cheaper, especially now.
Amy: I see your point, slightly overexposed with no clipping. Sounds right to me! Appreciate the info. regards~Bill
I didn't know I wanted a camera with a wider dynamic range until just now.... uh oh. New lens? or new body? Sigh.
I'd have to stick with Nikon - too much invested in lenses....
Wait - doesn't Fuji take the Nikon mount? (or is that an old memory dredged up from my camera-store days?)
Amy
Amy you can salvage the whites as shown if you do a double conversion. Linear then normal and combine. This is something you don't want to do all the time.
Exposure wise you only want to nail every time ..... and you can. We don't want to overexpose nor underexpose. In some images there is nothing you can do because the dynamic range is greater than the recording range.
Histogram wise by having data in the fifth box will give you the best chance for shadow detail. One think you do not want to do is to err on the side of under exposure since it will lead to poor images. One of the reasons we stressed understanding exposure so much is for the times you don't have a chance at adjusting and need to nail on the first try.
Fujifilm DSLR is a Nikon body with a Fuji brain. Fujifilm S5 is a Nikon D200 with a Fujifilm Super CCD sensor and uses everything Nikon. Mike Moats uses Fujifilm DSLRs. My old posts are shots taken with Fujifilm S5.
Last edited by Desmond Chan; 09-19-2008 at 09:44 PM.
Thanks, Al.
I'm still struggling with applying what I know about exposure to digital photography. I think I'm getting lost in histograms instead of relying on the fundamentals that I grew up with working in my dad's camera store.
I had never even owned a camera that had auto anything (much less digital) until digital finally started rivaling film, so going from complete manual to auto everything and digital and histograms is a leap.
I agree - I need to just get back to what I know, and stop relying on the preview screen (which is unreliable), or histograms (which I'm clearly not interpreting correctly). Maybe I'll try just turning preview off and pretend I'm using film.
:)
Amy D.
Hi Amy,
I have been following this thread and was wondering if you really should have used evaluative metering rather than spot as the bird is taking up less than half of the frame. (I think you cropped a fair bit off the bottom) For most of us not having long glass we have to rely on cropping and therefore (unless we are very close to the subject) have to do evaluative. I think this makes it more difficult to get good exposure because there are other things in the frame. My take anyways. Maybe someone will have more thoughts on this.
Don't get too discouraged.
Thanks for the encouragement, Jackie.
I hope that we will all learn from each other's struggles....
:)
Amy
HI Jackie
Great point on the metering selection. For the most part I use Matrix and don't go much for spot. Remember for the spot to work you need a tight reading like you get with the one degree hand held meters. Also there won't be time in most situations for locking in on one spot.
I know that Chas Glatzer uses an incident meter and spot for most of his work with impressive results. Its all what you get used to and make it work.
Great capture Amy. Very sharp and detailed image.
Congrats
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