Cattle Egret

[Chris van Rooyen]

I captured this backlit egret with the D3 and 500mm VR . The camera dealt quite well with the very contrasting scene.

Camera Model: NIKON D3
Date/Time: 2009:03:19 17:15:00
Shutter speed: 1/2500 sec
Aperture: 4
Exposure mode: Tv
Flash: Off
Metering mode: Multi-segment
ISO: 1000
Lens: 500mm f/4
Focal length: 500mm
Focal length: 500mm (in 35mm film)
AF mode: AF-C

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Great details, exposure control and BG. Not looking good for Canon. :)

[Richard Lovison]

I like the dramatic effect created by the backlighting and dark background. Beautiful capture.

[arash_hazeghi]

Awesome shot Chris, I love Nikon's 3D matrix metering for backlit and complex lightning! BG is creamy and nice, I wish I had a 500 VR :p I am sure this is how the original light and color was but I'd experiment making just the bird cooler using color control point in capture NX2.

[Kobus Tollig]

Great shot chris well done. Light and exposure is are great. Did you also go over to nikon now

[Jackie Schuknecht]

Stunning shot with great contrast and exposure.

[Chris van Rooyen]

Thanks for the comments guys. I have not yet decided on whether I will switch, financial considerations are also a major thing;) Actually I have found the 3D matrix metering not quite as great as I expected. Maybe I'm just very used to the Canon metering, but I have found a definite tendency from the D3 to over expose in many situations. I have also found over-exposed whites in the RAWs taken with the D3 to be a lot more difficult to recover in ACR than is the case with Canon RAWs. I hope to be experimenting soon with NX2 Capture to see if it works better with Nikon RAWs than ACR.