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Thread: Whitefaced Duck Portrait

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    Lifetime Member Stu Bowie's Avatar
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    Default Whitefaced Duck Portrait

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    These guys are fairly difficult to get the exposure correct on their heads. This was taken early morning, thus the light was not harsh, and I feel with the pp work, Im not entirely happy with the exposure.

    Canon 50D
    100-400 L IS USM @400mm
    1/800
    F/8
    ISO 640

    Hand Held

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    Nice feather details and BG. You are correct in that the whites are a bit toasty along the black edge on the face. Just looking at your posted specs, I don't see any - EV. Maybe dial it back 1/3 to 2/3's on an image like this an see how it turns out. You can also spot meter on the whites and that will help as well.

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    Avian Moderator Randy Stout's Avatar
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    Stuart:

    Mike hit the high points. With black/white birds, or vivid colored birds such as cardinals and orioles, I start at -.7 and often go to more comp. as needed based on the histogram. I always run the three channel histogram and watch it carefully. Usually its red that blows (even when it is a white subject.)

    You have excellent details in the blacks, which usually does come at the expense of the whites. :)

    I like this guy a lot, very sharp, nice eye.

    Randy

  4. #4
    Judy Lynn Malloch
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    Good comments above and they pretty much covered it all. Beautiful portrait and excellent sharp detail with a superb BG. Like it a lot Stuart...

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    Lifetime Member Doug Brown's Avatar
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    I take a slightly different approach to this common situation. Also, I'm curious about your PP workflow. What are the steps you took here and with which programs. I normally will deliberately overexpose black and white birds by 1/3 to 2/3 stops to pull more detail out of the blacks. I can then pull the overexposed whites back using Lightroom. I do this with both my 50D and my Mark III.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Doug Brown View Post
    I take a slightly different approach to this common situation. Also, I'm curious about your PP workflow. What are the steps you took here and with which programs. I normally will deliberately overexpose black and white birds by 1/3 to 2/3 stops to pull more detail out of the blacks. I can then pull the overexposed whites back using Lightroom. I do this with both my 50D and my Mark III.
    Doug made me think.....:) I shoot Nikon and your shooting Canon so our metering systems are not the same.... Canons are off, just kidding.:p

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    Avian Moderator Randy Stout's Avatar
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    Doug:

    I also shoot Nikons. They meter significantly differently than the Canons, so perhaps my point isn't applicable to Stuart. I would still rather get it as close in the camera and not have to save it in post. In my workflow, it is easier to get more detail out of the dark areas than it is to try and save toasted whites.

    Randy

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    Lifetime Member Doug Brown's Avatar
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    Good one Mike!
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    you may be able to recover some of those whites using the exposure and recovery sliders in camera raw. the detail in the blacks are awesome! i love the monotone bg also.

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    Lifetime Member Doug Brown's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Randy Stout View Post
    In my workflow, it is easier to get more detail out of the dark areas than it is to try and save toasted whites.
    I find that the exposure brush in Lightroom 2 is wonderful for recovering whites and leaving the blacks untouched. Remember that I'm only talking about 1/3 to 2/3 of a stop of overexposure. The problem with recovering detail from the blacks is that there's not as much recoverable detail in underexposed blacks as there is in slightly overexposed whites. This gets into the whole expose to the right line of thinking.
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  11. #11
    Axel Hildebrandt
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    I like the head angle, details and BG in this one. Interesting discussion regarding the whites. If you use RAW overexposing the whites a bit is not a big problem but you have to recover them in your RAW converter. Here the whites still appear partially overexposed.

  12. #12
    Fabs Forns
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    Stuart, the whites around the eye are totally gone, I checked to see if they could be brought back, but I go readings of 255 and 254, which are solid white.
    What I'd do here is go with a few very little blinkies (highlight alert) for the face, and make two separate conversions. One for the blacks and a darker one for the face.
    Put the lighter copy on top as a layer, create a layer mask (Third tool from the left at the bottom of the layers palette) and using the brush tool, paint with black on the whites to reveal the darker whites. That should give you the perfect exposure.

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    BPN Viewer Steve Canuel's Avatar
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    Nicely detailed. Interesting texture on the bill as well. I've used Fab's trick for blending two PP versions from the same file before with good results. Worth trying.

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    Lifetime Member Stu Bowie's Avatar
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    Thank you all so much for the wonderful feedback. I appreciate each and every comment.

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    IOTY Winner 2010 Chris Kotze's Avatar
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    Super close up and great detail and colours
    Chris Kotze

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