This from Shiloh Marsh Road at Merritt Island NWR. The fish was eventually consumed by the egret. The water in this lagoon is evenly shallow and the bird hunted in a large area away and towards me, shaking his foot underwater to flush prey (small crustaceans). This larger fish was speared, and he dropped it several times and then recovered it, as shown here. Cropped about 50% of total area, color balanced and selectively high-pass sharpened; otherwise, no scene mods.
Date/Time Original : 2011:03:13 08:19:39
Camera Model Name : NIKON D300
Lens ID : AF-S Nikkor 300mm f/4D IF-ED, 1.4 TC
Shutter Speed : 1/800
Aperture : 5.6
ISO : 200
White Balance : Auto
Focus Distance : 29.85 m
Depth Of Field : 1.12 m (29.31 - 30.42)
Auto Focus : On
Focus Mode : AF-C
Shooting Mode : Continuous
AF Area Mode : Dynamic Area (21 points)
Exposure Program : Aperture-priority AE
Exposure Compensation : -1/3
Exposure Mode : Auto
Vibration Reduction : Off
Excellent action with the speared fish and the water trail. The biggest challenges here are the harsh light and the hard shadow on the bird's neck. Looks like sun had only been up for 2 + hours but light in Florida must be harsh by then? Also, a lower shooting angle can give better backgrounds and also a more involved feel with your subject. I'd crop from the top and a bit from the left.
Last edited by Grace Scalzo; 03-14-2011 at 06:58 PM.
Reason: wording
Svante: I use Phil Harvey's ExifTool. Nikon has their own additional exif tag names, including focal distance and DOF (neither of which are very precise - especially at longer distances). I have ExifTool installed on my Windows desktop as exiftool( -k -MyShortcut -w txt).exe. Simply drag and drop an image file onto the ExifTool icon. The -w argument causes the exif information to be written to a new file, co-located with and having the same name as the image file, but with a .txt extension. The -MyShortcut argument points to a section in a custom config file (attached). Either put it in on the desktop or better still, hide it in a folder and create an environment variable EXIFTOOL_HOME to identify that folder. Take note of the leading dot in the config file filename .ExifTool_config.
OK, the config file is not attached, this being a photography site and only image files are allowed. The contents of the file follow. You will need to copy and paste into a new .ExifTool_config file. The Windows GUI doesn't let you name a file with a leading dot, so save it as ExifTool_config then shell out to the command prompt and rename it there. (this got a whole lot more complicated that I expected when I started my reply).
The config file is set up for Nikon lenses. I see from your profile that you are a Nikon shooter, so you should be all set.
.ExifTool_config follows .....
#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# File: ExifTool_config --> ~/.ExifTool_config
#
# Description: Sample user configuration file for Image::ExifTool
#
# Notes: This example file shows how to define your own shortcuts and
# add new EXIF, IPTC, XMP, PNG, MIE and Composite tags, as well
# as how to specify preferred lenses for the LensID tag and
# define default values for ExifTool options.
#
# Note that unknown tags may be extracted even if they aren't
# defined, but tags must be defined to be written. Also note
# that it is possible to override an existing tag definition
# with a new tag.
#
# To activate this file, rename it to ".ExifTool_config" and
# place it in your home directory or the exiftool application
# directory. (On Windows and Mac systems this must be done via
# the command line since the GUI's don't allow filenames to begin
# with a dot. Use the "rename" command in Windows or "mv" on the
# Mac.) This causes ExifTool to automatically load the file when
# run. Your home directory is determined by the first defined of
# the following environment variables:
#
# 1. EXIFTOOL_HOME
# 2. HOME
# 3. HOMEDRIVE + HOMEPATH
# 4. (the current directory)
#
# Alternatively, the -config option of the exiftool application
# may be used to load a specific configuration file (note that
# it must be the first option on the command line):
#
# exiftool -config ExifTool_config ...
#
# This sample file defines the following 13 new tags as well as a
# number of Shortcut and Composite tags:
#
# 1. EXIF:NewEXIFTag
# 2. IPTC:NewIPTCTag
# 3. XMP-xmp:NewXMPxmpTag
# 4. XMP-xxx:NewXMPxxxTag1
# 5. XMP-xxx:NewXMPxxxTag2
# 6. XMP-xxx:NewXMPxxxTag3
# 7. XMP-xxx:NewXMPxxxStructX
# 8. XMP-xxx:NewXMPxxxStructY
# 9. PNG:NewPngTag1
# 10. PNG:NewPngTag2
# 11. PNG:NewPngTag3
# 12. MIE-Meta:NewMieTag1
# 13. MIE-Test:NewMieTag2
#
# For detailed information on the definition of tag tables and
# tag information hashes, see lib/Image/ExifTool/README.
#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Shortcut tags are used when extracting information to simplify
# commonly used commands. They can be used to represent groups
# of tags, or to provide an alias for a tag name.
%Image::ExifTool::UserDefined::Shortcuts = (
MyShortcut => ['DateTimeOriginal',
'Model',
'LensID',
'ShutterSpeed',
'Aperture',
'ISO',
'WhiteBalance',
'FocalLength35efl',
'FocusDistance',
'DOF',
'AutoFocus',
'FocusMode',
'ShootingMode',
'AFAreaMode',
'ExposureProgram',
'ExposureCompensation',
'ExposureMode',
'VibrationReduction',
'FlashSource',
'ExternalFlashFirmware',
'ExternalFlashFlags',
'FlashMode',
'FlashExposureComp',
'Quality',
'ColorSpace'],
);
David, Can you please edit the pane above and delete the extraneous text (assuming that there is some) :). Thanks!
BIRDS AS ART Blog: great info and lessons, lots of images with our legendary BAA educational Captions; we will not sell you junk. 30+ years of long lens experience/e-mail with gear questions.
BIRDS AS ART Online Store: we will not sell you junk. 35 years of long lens experience. Please e-mail with gear questions.
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Good stuff by Grace. You did relatively well with the harsh, off angled light. EXP looks good as does the big fish. The image does not look especially sharp. At 30+ meters with a 300 this would seem like a very large crop. May we see the full frame original?
I will get back with more once I hear from you :)
BIRDS AS ART Blog: great info and lessons, lots of images with our legendary BAA educational Captions; we will not sell you junk. 30+ years of long lens experience/e-mail with gear questions.
BIRDS AS ART Online Store: we will not sell you junk. 35 years of long lens experience. Please e-mail with gear questions.
Check out the new SONY e-Guide and videos that I did with Patrick Sparkman here. Ten percent discount for BPN members,
Artie: Attached is the original, downsampled to 96dpi and 1000x664 using bicubic sharpener. As for the (lengthy) extraneous text, there really isn't any extraneous to remove. Can we move it to Digital Workflow? In retrospect, that is where it belongs. Thanks.
Thanks for the ORIG. Not as big a crop as I thought. As for all that data we should move it to a warehouse :)
Try to find some birds right down your shadow line; this is even more important when the sun is bright....
BIRDS AS ART Blog: great info and lessons, lots of images with our legendary BAA educational Captions; we will not sell you junk. 30+ years of long lens experience/e-mail with gear questions.
BIRDS AS ART Online Store: we will not sell you junk. 35 years of long lens experience. Please e-mail with gear questions.
Check out the new SONY e-Guide and videos that I did with Patrick Sparkman here. Ten percent discount for BPN members,
Reddish Egret
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