Goldeneye and high ISO

[Richard Unsworth]

:)

Hi
Seasons greetings to all

Stepping out of my comfort zone here; fancy picking a black and white bird!:p, tried to push to right to avoid noise of course dropping SS

SS 1/200
Ev +1.67
FL 500, Canon 100-400 + 1.4
ISO 1250
f8
NR and selective SS in CS5

C & C welcome

[Ben_Sadd]

Richard,

A good head angle, and for me the noise is not too bad.

I would crop a bit from the top to remove the dark patches and bring the eye to somewhere around the upper thirds line.

I think you made a good attempt here with a difficult bird to expose for. However, on checking the histogram, some of the whites are still blocked, especially on the breast. So, you are somewhere in the middle :) Some of the whites are detail-less, while the black on the head also lacks detail. I think I would try and expose to get either details in the blacks or keep the whites all in range.

The eye could be a touch sharper.

What camera where you using? With the 7D I find little difference between the intermediate stop ISOs and the higher full stop, e.g. between 1250 and 1600. Therefore, I have set it to only use full stop ISO values.

[Richard Unsworth]

:)

Hi Ben

Thanks for the CC , Canon 40D here
posted recrop

advice on exposure good thanks.
I was trying to add light to avoid noise at the high ISO, using that as at lower ISO no point in taking shot SS too low.
I must practice this trade off or get my tripod out!

[John Chardine]

Nice bird Richard. Head angle perfect.

I assume you shot RAW. If so try to recover some of the whites and fill the blacks in Adobe Camera Raw. I would suggest a couple more things- the reflection is not very strong so I would consider cropping it out. Also, the image needs some more sharpening. I tried this in Photoshop and it will take some significant sharpening without looking oversharpened.

[pat lillich]

gorgeous bird Richard. hope you repost it with some of the advice above, would love to see it!

[Dave Leroy]

Good for you to get out of the comfort zone and a very nice result as well.
Fill flash is one other option to take care of the blacks.

I think if you have to lose one end of the tone range, you need to expose for the whites and lose some blacks.

I also like the idea of more sharpening.

Dave

[Richard Unsworth]

OK everyone, thanks for the suggestions

Recropped to include less reflection, more sharpening in SS PS5, Max recovery slider in CR5, blacks adjusted just to clipping point.

Looks a lot better to me
btw I took many shots and may well have not picked the best, will sort through more today:)
Please keep up the excellent critiques!
Rich