Returned to my Avocet location Saturday morning - sky was heavy overcast - but for less than five minutes the sun streamed through between the horizon and the clouds allowing me the opportunity to catch a number of images of this handsome Avocet - glowing in the etherial light.
I was using a 2x converter to get the extra distance up to 1000mm - I still find I am not getting the image quality I want with this, but keep trying! Of course, 1/250 sec is too slow for so much lens - making it difficult for myself, I guess.
Technicals - Canon 1D MkIII, 500 f/4L IS, 2x converter
1/250 sec at f/8, ISO 1250
PP in LR2 and CS4 - multiplied layer for the whites, 2 rounds of smart sharpening on the bird and 2 rounds of Noise Ninja on the background.
gerald, i love this. awesome bg colors and great pose of the birds. i multiplied it again at 50% opacity and this is what i came up with. what is it that doesnt look right to you. i know your bird is a little hot, but after looking at it compared to the one i did, i may like yours best. i did a small sharpening to the small jpeg, just fyi.
Hi Gerald - love the BG and the pose - Harolds repost helps address the hot whites - use your overexposure blinkies and your histogram to confirm your exposure.
You are making it hard for yourself with the shutter speed - generally you will want to be at 1 over the focal length for a minimum - so 1/1250th here for maximum sharpness.
Lots to like here - just keep a eye on the exposure.
Beautiful shot and BG with the water blending into the BG. Think you could recover the whites. I checked and it looks like the red channel is blown. Maybe if you de-saturated the reds in CS4 and used the recovery slider. I think the extra sharpening would help to blow the whites too. All in all a beautiful shot though. Worth a rework.
Gerald - This is a lovely image and I agree that it is very worthy of some additional work. I like Harold's re-post in that it tones down the bg and gives a bit more sharpness to the bird. I would try Jackie's suggestion and tone down the reds. The bg orange playing against the bg blue is difficult; they are actually working against each other.
Wonderful, delicate bird
Gail
I like the morning warm light. Usually I don't like when background transition cut the bird's neck, but it in this case it's alright since the transition is a little below the neck and the orange background helps add the warm feeling. The repost makes the image even better with more details in the white, agree about trying to tone down the red.
Good morning all and thanks for your very helpful comments and suggestions - especially Harold for going to the trouble to adjust and repost.
Normally, the white in these birds is a very stark white and it was only the colour of the sunlight that made the bird really "glow". I have tried to maintain some of the glow and balance that against "too hot". On conversion in LR2, I desaturated the green (-8%), as I had a green triangle, and I gave a slight touch of "recovery" to pull back from the histogram edge.
I don't think that the whites are "blown" but they are pretty hot. In CS4 now, I have tried to desaturate the reds, as Jackie suggested (Thanks!), but that didn't seem to make any difference for me. I tried another multiply layer as Harold did, but it seemed to multiply the contrasts in the whites and create a "false texture". So I decided to try another of Artie's tricks and made a Selective Color adjustment layer, selected the whites and added some black - eventually deciding on 30% (Relative). This seemed to give a result somewhere between the original and Harold's suggestion.
Would have tried even a higher ISO for more shutter speed At 1/250 you could make a very sharp image with perfect technique !!!! btw I'm treating 1600 as a normal working ISO for my macro work !! Noise is easy to deal with later !!!
Pied Avocet in first light
