Gosh, what have I done? Now I have to post some... :eek:
Here's a white pelican landing at the Salton Sea.
50D, EF400mm f/5.6L
Manual mode, f/7.1@1/5000 ISO 800 AWB
AI Servo autofocus using back button, HH no flash
My camera is set to the "standard" picture style, which is 3,0,0,0 in Canon-speak. I don't use either of the contrast enhancement features (highlight tone priority and auto lighting optimizer).
What I would do to improve it - crop a little from the top, bottom, and left side. Use some sort of good noise reduction software on the bg. Do my usual PS magic sauce of curves, selective color, hue/saturation, and sharpening of some sort. Things I find needing improvement are midtones (looks dark overall), saturation, contrast reduction, and sharpness.
Hi Kerry - had to put your money were your mouth is :) :)
With whatever you do you need to be careful with your whites - whilst they are not over as presented they dont need to be any brighter IMHO.
Doesn't look dark on my screen/
I would QM the top part where the structure is and crop from left and top to off center the bird. Exposure wise I would leave it as I kind of think it is good allround.
Hi Kerry Settings wise I would decrease the ISO, the 50D is not known for its low noise :) .... and btw does look surprisingly clean.
The image is very close to optimal, just needed help form the bird ... landing a little closer and toward you The dark up top is going to give some problems. btw fully up wing position would have helped also !!
Assignment - out of camera
