Ring-billed Gull in flight

[Bill Dix]

D90; 80-400 VR @ 360mm. ISO 400, f/8 @ 1/2500s. Matrix metering @ -0.7. Cropped to about 60% of original width.

The light was getting nice in late afternoon on Christmas Eve, and not much else was flying around my local lake. Histogram in the camera looked pretty good on this one, but a few blacks were off the left end. I tried in PP to keep from clipping them in the wingtips while keeping the whites from getting muddy; but if I increased contrast to pop the bird a bit, I lost more pixels on the left, and if I boosted the shadows I lost some pixels on the right. The whites top out in the mid-240s. So I think this is the best compromise given what I know how to do in PS Elements. But would appreciate any suggestions, C&C. (And yes, I know that the wings are neither fully up or fully down.)

[Jeff Cashdollar]

Bill, the tradeoff is working towards the right direction for you, well done. Might be a tad underexposed. Happy to see you have info in all 5 stops and a mid 240 top end is not bad. Just curious, did you try and bracketing, wonder what a +.7 would look like?

Love the placement and full wing position - nice one.

[Bill Dix]

Bill, the tradeoff is working towards the right direction for you, well done. Might be a tad underexposed. Happy to see you have info in all 5 stops and a mid 240 top end is not bad. Just curious, did you try and bracketing, wonder what a +.7 would look like?

Love the placement and full wing position - nice one.

Thank you Jeff. I did not try bracketing. I should try that next time. I did try some other shots before I took this one, and checked the histograms (although it was cold and my eyes were watering, so I couldn't see too well). I was pushing the whites over the edge on anything more than -0.7. But I know you are an advocate of pushing it as far as possible to the right, and it might have been interesting to see what several other exposures on the same image might do. Good idea, and thanks.

[Gus Cobos]

Hi Bill,
Considering the circumstances, you did quite well. I like the position of your subject in frame, you have a clear sharp eye and good head angle. With birds in flight, its practice, practice and practice, paying attention to the light angle, thus avoiding any shadows...good show, looking forward to your next one...:cool:

[Anita Rakestraw]

I like the pose and composition and think because of the bird's comp, the wing position is not a problem. The shadow is probably the biggest drawback (altho I like that it profiles his head/beak.)

[Lance Peters]

Hi Bill - agree with Gus's comments, if you are loosing both ends then its outside the dynamic range the camera can handle - softer light required. maybe one day we will see camera's with 3 sensors - one of each, red,green,blue that might increase the dynamic range - who knows.
Doing well with that lens - sharp and well composed.

[Jeff Cashdollar]

Bill,

You did the right thing and protected the whites. That is critical in my book and as a result you have an image w/o any clipping - well done my friend.

You exposure settings are solid and you have a solid grasp of the distribution of the histogram - keep it up.

[Bill Dix]

Thank you all for looking. I appreciate the kind and helpful comments.