I've never had much luck with BIF and on Sunday I thought I try to get a better technique. After 20 minutes of sheer frustration I was about to give up. I found I was trying to get the bird in the frame, check for composition, watch the head angle, try for good lighting and then, when all that was accomplished make sure that AF had engaged with the subject! :confused: Needless to say, by the time all that was achieved the bird was long gone. So I pointed my awesome AF 7D in the direction of the bird and decided to trust in my camera, God and his angels and started shooting.
So this is one of the results and although it is just a humble silver gull, I was quite pleased with the result. Am a little concerned by the amount of noise I'm getting with the 7D and have used Nik dfine brushed onto the background. Any feedback would be welcomed.
7D; EF70-200mm @ 100mm; ISO200; f8; 1/1600; manual focus; hh
Is "Silver Gull" a species of gull? It's a beautiful one :)
Looks like your trust in the camera paid off with a sharp image with nice detail in the head. A head angle towards you would be nice. The blue background seems a little intense you might want to try and desaturate the blues.
Still better than my BIF!
Keep them coming!
Focus looks nice, and I like the pose. With the bird looking left, a bit more canvas on that side would be nice. I agree the sky is too "electric" - I would reduce the blue saturation to get that in check. I don't have a 7D, but the noise does seem excessive for ISO 200...this could be because of, or a combination of, heavy crop, sharpening method and/or aggressiveness, heavy underexposure brought back up in PP.
BTW, gulls are the very best BIF practice subjects...and usually very accessible, so keep on praticing with them!!
Thanks Alvan & Daniel. Silver gulls are our local seagulls and very common. I had reduced the blue already, it was very blue. I had underexposed slightly to keep some detail in the white feathers. Maybe I overdid it.
Trust in angels
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