XTi + 400 f/5.6, 1/25, f/7.1, ISO 400, tripod, no flash, taken July 31 in the San Francisco Bay Area. I've been thinking of trying to clone an open eye onto the background bird that looks like it has its nictitating membrane deployed. Also thinking of darkening a bit the out of focus dry grass in the foreground. Any comments would be most appreciated.
Exposure techs are alright, I might have tried a larger aperture to bump-up shutter. Shots with close & busy BG's try and keep aperture open. Nice shot of a species I have never seen, maybe add some room at the bottom for the feet to clear. Nice nature moment, thanks for sharing.
Last edited by Jeff Cashdollar; 12-25-2009 at 09:58 PM.
Hi - Histogram is showing some clipped whites, might try and recover them a little if possible.
Think you may have cut the poor fellows feet off at the bottom - generally want to include enough room for the Virtual feet if they are not all visible.
The eye is a easy fix - just copy the one from the foreground - put it on its own layer and then mask out the sections you do not want to include - then apply a little Gaussian blur so that it does not look as sharp as the front one.
Heres a real quick and dirty version.
keep em coming :)
Love the fluffy look, the low angle and the feather details. Good idea about cloning the eye and Lance repost looks good. Also like your idea of toning down the white foreground. More room at the bottom for virtual feet would be nice. Might try to run NR on the background and sharpen the birds a bit more.
Hi Flavio,
A nice catch...:D I agree with the techs. and good advise given, Mr. Peters' repost improves the image considerably...I like your low capture angle...keep them coming...:cool:
Thanks for the comments and the repost. My reasoning for f/7.1 was (a) with two quite round foreground birds, I needed the DOF, (b) shooting at these absurdly low light levels, the exact shutter speed doesn't matter that much since I'm not really in control of the shot -- the birds are. If they choose to do their part and don't move, the shot will come out; if they choose not to do their part and twitch a little, the shot's ruined. They did their part.:)
I should add that I did this with a remote release but not mirror lockup, and with my left hand over the lens pressing it slightly down onto the tripod.
California quail female and juvenile
Posting Permissions
