As the seasons change, the owls have moved on, and the oystercatchers have returned. They seem a bit tired from their journey. This was photographed yesterday evening in misty conditions, which I tried to incorporate into the scene.
Thank you for looking and for your comments, all of which are greatly appreciated.
1/500, f5.6, ISO 800 Flash, ettl-1 1/3, tripod
Canon 50D (Not noisy if exposed to the right!), 500mm f4 + 1.4tc + lowered tripod
Grace,
Beautiful subject. This image is well exposed, nicely composed, tack sharp and the low prospective allows the viewer to make a connection with your subject.
I noticed you used your flash with E-TTL at -1 1/3 stops.
In this case I don't even see a catch-light(or maybe it's tiny?).
TTL flashes meter the scene the same way your camera's reflected meter does.
So just like you do on your camera, with a lighter than middle tone scene you would need to add light to expose the scene correctly.
I'm suggesting that in this case, light background with dark subject, setting your flash at 0 to -2/3 would still net out to be about 1 stop less than if the background had been a middle tone.
Thank you James and Axel. James, there is a catchlight at the 10 o'clock position. Doesn't show up too well here. Regarding my flash settings, with this camera at higher ISOs, I make sure to expose as far to the right as I can to avoid noise. So I used a bit less flash than usual so as not to make the whole thing too bright. Is that a flaw in my thinking? Axel, I did not run NR or apply a blur in this image. I did however remove that annoying magenta cast that always shows up unless the scene is lit with bright sunshine. In this image, I removed it by de-saturating the red channel, some images it works better by applying an average blur. (This was at Jones)
Hi Grace Your thinking on the noise/exp is correct. Any under exposure with the 50D will lead to trouble... otherwise it performs very well. ... and if you do encounter noise do try Topaz has worked great for me.
Love the relaxed pose and feel !!! Agree with James on the flash setting ... btw on trick you can use is making to or three fast exposures. The first will be full flash, second the capacitor not being fully charge will give you less and the third not flash at all. Sort of like flash bracketing !!
The light is extremely sweet and it reminds me of one day we had with OCs in Little Estero.
Great composition and very peaceful feel to this one, thanks for sharing it.