Assignment SOC

[Dana Perkins]

Canon 5D, 1/1250 sec, f/8.0, ISO 800, 300mmf/2.8 + 2xtc with tripod
This shot was taken Saturday morning and it had been cloudy most of the time.
I look forward to learning how to improve my photographs. Thanks!

[Lance Peters]

HI Dana - A big warm welcome to the BPN Family - lots of friendly folk here.
Nice first post - I like the action loks like he is hopng from tree to tree.

Some of your whites are starting to push the limits - up around the 250 50 250 mark - which whilst not over is always going to look a lot brighter when saved and viewed on the web, Would try a multiply layer in photoshop to tone them down just a bit.

Also your birds head is angled slightly away from you - whilst it doesnt really bother me as presented as it fits in with the action - always best to have the head angled just a little towards you.

Some tips - turn on your over exposure blinkies and make use of your histogram to confirm your exposure - also make use of your exposure compensation feature.
The eductaional resources forum has heaps of good info.
Looking forward to seeing more :)

[Ákos Lumnitzer]

Welcome Dana and a wonderful first post indeed. I wanted to reply earlier but your linked site is blocked from my work so I had to wait.

Other than what Lance suggested, I selected the head/neck and lightened it a little. And cropped to my personal taste. Hope you are OK with that.

We hope to see more lovely creations of yours. :

[Alfred Forns]

Fine suggestions and fully agree !!! Can only add I see you stopped down one stop which is fine but remember your lens is capable of razor sharp images wide open !!!

....one other thing you can do processing wise is selecting the head and working on the green and eye !!! .... a treat having you here and Big Warm Welcome !!!!

[David Thomasson]

Some of your whites are starting to push the limits - up around the 250 50 250 mark - which whilst not over is always going to look a lot brighter when saved and viewed on the web, Would try a multiply layer in photoshop to tone them down just a bit.

I wouldn't go there. Multiply will lower the luminance of highlights all right, but at the cost of also greatly lowering darker tones down the luminance scale. On the plumage of a white bird, which is often intermingled with darker tones and shadows, this can create a muddy effect. Better to use either the exposure slider in Camera Raw or the Exposure adjustment layer inside Photoshop.

Since this sort of correction comes up often with white birds, snow scenes, etc., it's worth illustrating the drastic effect multiply can have. In the grayscale patches below, my aim was to tone down the 250 highlight to about 245. I did this by two methods, first with a multiply layer, and second with the Exposure slider inside Photoshop. Both get me the 245 I'm after in the highlights. But Multiply also darkens the adjacent tones much more than I want. Not good. Bottom line: When toning down hot areas, Multiply is usually not your friend. Try the exposure slider in ACR or in Photoshop. Both are designed to have more effect on highlights, less on midtones and shadows.

[Gus Cobos]

Hi Dana,
A big warm welcome to the BPN family,
I like your capture...you have received very good advise and all of the techs. have been addressed. I am looking forward to your next one...good show...:cool:

[Dana Perkins]

Thank you for the warm welcome. I have a lot to learn and appreciate all the helpful suggestions!

[KurtPreston]

This is much better than I get out of white birds SOC :) I tend to under-expose the whites a bit and have to push the exposure in ACR. Good job! The crop Akos suggested takes it up a notch ... but your original comp SOC is really good.

[WIlliam Maroldo]

I noticed several things in your adjustments. White birds are a real problem;get their exposure correct and the background is very likely to be underexposed. ISO 800? Seems a bit high without much advantage, especially with white birds that need underexposure. Normally exposure compensation is called for, and -1EV at least. I don't mess with it though, and find that manually choosing both shutter speed and exposure works much more consistantly.(normally I use aperture priority and exposure compensation with other than completely white birds) Usually I can take a test shot of an egret not in flight, and check the histogram. To me F8 is a pretty good aperture to start with large birds where you want all of the bird in focus. Then adjust the shutter speed up or down, and you can easily do this on the fly as light conditions change. Actually the higher the shutter speed the better, and under 1/1250 sec is probably not a good idea.
As far as post processing I have best luck with curves adjustment in ACR. Knock down the lights and highlights, crank up the overall exposure till getting close to the 255/255/255 blow out point. Hope I've been helpful ~Bill