Whitefaced Duck

[Stu Bowie]

At one of the local birding spots in Pretoria, we dont have much of a choice of species to shoot. Whitefaced ducks arrive here in our winter, so we have plenty of opportunities to shoot them, as they fly across the water. I have checked the whites of his face, and they are fine to me. I experimented today by not using a + EC, as I found I was blowing their faces. I still had to recover this with no EC. Using a -EC, I will not be able to show the detail and colours on their plumage.

Canon 50D
100-400 L IS USM @ 400mm
1/2500
F/5.6
ISO 1250

Shutter priority
ISO set on auto.

Hand Held

[Arthur Morris]

Hi Stuart, Love the wing position. There are still some hot pixels, more than a handful. What are you using to convert?

[Stu Bowie]

Artie, Thanks a lot for your feedback. Im recovering in ACR, and then using CS3. OK, I checked again, and I see a sprinkle on the edge of the face. My concern is not to show the main part of the face as blown, or overexposed.

[Arthur Morris]

YAW. My advice it to use the Recovery slider to not only eliminate the red warning areas but to move the highlight end of the histogram about 1/16th of an inch away from the highlight axis. If that is not possible with only the Recovery slider, then I move the EXP slider to the left a bit. Then, if the whites look bright you can do a Linear Burn on them. I strive to eliminate all flashing pixel except for those in specular highlights....

[Stu Bowie]

Artie, thats why you guys are the pro's. Thanks. To be honest, I could have moved the recovery slider more on this image, but have been afraid that if I move it too far to the right, Im going to lose IQ, but I see I dont.

[Arthur Morris]

I have had images where I had to move the Recovery slider all the way tot he right and darken the image with no loss of IQ. It was the ability to do this that got me to switch from Breezebrowser to ACR for my conversions. I still do all of my editing in BrBr.

Re-convert, get rid of the bill shine, run a Linear Burn if needed, and repost. The proof is in the pudding.

[Stu Bowie]

For you Artie. Here,s my proof.

[Arthur Morris]

Hey Stuart, Way, way better. There are still a smattering of hot pixels in the JPEG. For the repost I reduced the contrast a bit and did a 24% Liinear Burn on the white face. Now onto the rest of the image. Love the wing position and the SH. And the hanging feet. And the BKGR color. Did you do any work in the lrhc???? Lastly, the bird's head and neck are angled slightly away from you.

[Arthur Morris]

ps: On a second look a bit off of the bottom would help.

[Stu Bowie]

Thanks a lot Artie. I didnt use as much % as you did, but Im glad I improved the image with your expertise. No work was down on the BG at all, except to run NR.

[Morkel Erasmus]

great shot Stu - from this morning?? mine also have a lot of blown faces. will follow this advice.
was great meeting you - sorry I had to leave early :)

[Arthur Morris]

Thanks a lot Artie. I didnt use as much % as you did, but Im glad I improved the image with your expertise. No work was down on the BG at all, except to run NR.

YAW. I have had similar images where folks would have sworn that I messed with this or that only to see that it was the same on the RAW. Just another reason to take a bit off the bottom.

[DanWalters]

Nice action. Like the blue background and the comp.

[Dave Barnes]

This is a good capture Stu and the repost an improvement.
I like the detail captured. Good colour and comp.

[Stu Bowie]

Thank you all for the great feedback.