I captured this Swallow-tailed Gull presenting a gift to its mate during Artie's last Galapagos trip. Image info: Canon 5D, 70-200 F/2.8 with 2x teleconverter, hand held at 1/500 at F/5.6 with plus 1/3 exposure compensation. Conditions were bright sunshine and no clouds. Bird was photographed in the shade.
Nice picture, please provide ISO as well, this will help better understand the exposure.
Love the eye and natural detail in the head, no over saturation (keeping it real)
The whites and their detail are your opportunities. I assume you metered with Eval, IMO this tone mix might lend itself to alternative metering. I might have spot metered the brightest white spot and added 2 or 2 1/3 stops. Once you get one of the tones right, the rest fall in place. The total image might seem mid-tone but the whites are too dominate. This is based on the partial picture shown above. If this is a crop and other tones were in play, then my comments might be invalid. Of course, an EV compensation might help as well, maybe EV= 0, -1/3.
Was anything blinking or did you clip on the right?
Nice shot, that is my 2 cents. Let's see what others say.
Last edited by Jeff Cashdollar; 08-03-2009 at 06:47 PM.
Hi Dean,
A big warm welcome to the BPN family...I like your capture, you have a good head angle and sharp eye contact, I like the open bill in the feeding mode...a few points to consider; your whites are running at 244 a bit on the hot side, lacking the feather details, and your subject is too centered in frame...I took the liberty to illustrate these points by modifying and adjusting your base image and composition...I toned down the whites a little, cropped from the left side of the frame and added canvas to the right side, thus off centering your bird...also ran noise reduction in the background, adjusted the mid-tones slightly, and selective sharpened the eye...see if this presents best to you...:cool:
Lovely image and tweaks by Gus sure made it even stronger !!!!
Regarding the whites you might not have any hot pixels at all but when close to the edge don't reproduce all that well. Not sure what Gus did sicne there are many ways of toning down, one is using curves but would rather have done it in camera maybe shooting even (suggesting this after the fact !!)
btw metering wise you did great The method Jeff mentiions is valid but I do not recommend More often than not birds don't stay around long enough for the calculations. I like working in Evaluative with either manual or auto modes.
Jeff for your calculations did you consider the bird was in the shade? Would you have made a different calculation if it was in the sun? How sure are you that you are only metering white and not a darker color? ... are you sure you are suggesting + 2 1/3 ?
btw when working real close you might want to stop down a bit for dof ... if you check the charts its not much !!!
Al, you must be right. APB suggest that cloudy days (same as shade I suppose) EV can be +1/3. Of course the word (shade) is hard to define. Maybe, 0, or -1/3 would have helped a tad.
Moreover, Gus said the whites ran 244 (not blown). I believe you are correct, the pixels are not hot just look like they have lost detail.
Dean, the spot suggestion of 2 + stops was based on sun shine, my greater point was when whites are this dominating I think other metering should be considered. In this case, the shade might have balanced the scene to a gray tone, hence Eval would have been the option.
So, on balance, disregard everything I have said.
Last edited by Jeff Cashdollar; 08-03-2009 at 08:09 PM.
Glad your on your toes Beep !!! Your trying different things and figuring them out !!! After a while you will see which is the most convenient way for you to meter and that is all that counts !!! ... your doing well proud of you !!!
Gus....How do you add canvas to the right side when it has two tones. i would really like to know the basic technique. I have only done it with a single tone
Regarding Bob's question,..One easy way to add multiple tones is to (1) add canvas as usual and then (2) use QM or clone to copy and extend the pattern into the new empty space.
Swallow-tailed Gull
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