Our air is pretty clear here and the sun stays harsh right up until it sets. I tried to combat this by making a backlit image of a Common Grackle (a North American member of the Icteridae family). The BG was backlit too so the whole tonal range was in relative balance
I made a significant crop and evened out the BG tonal variation with a soft clone tool. Also ran NR on the BG.
Canon EOS 50D, 500mm f4, 1.4 tcII = 700mm
capture date: Wednesday, 29 April, 2009 7:27 PM
exposure program: Aperture Priority
ISO speed: 400
shutter speed: 1/200
aperture: f7.1
exposure bias: +0.0
metering: Pattern
flash: OFF
first backlight grack I have actually seen in an image. The rim light is on the "correct"
part of the bird IMO and the good bright eye is the real complement.
I love the tones of the bird and the backlight trhough the tail, but the rim lighting on the back is too bright for my eyes.
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Thanks for all the comments. Yes the rim lighting is bright Artie, although not blown. The luminance difference of these areas is about 95/100 for the rim light compared to about 10/100 for the bird. By my reckoning, this is 3+ stops (10 to 20 to 40 to 80 to 95) tonal range, which the camera was able to handle (does this calculation make sense?). I'll try toning it down a little with some dodging.