Hi everyone, I'm posting my first photo on this forum, so it will double as an introduction. My name is Patricio Murphy, I'm from Argentina. I'm a professional musician, and spend every moment I can with my D200 shooting birds.
This one was shot in a urban artificial lake in Buenos Aires, a few blocks from the metropolitan airport. The lake and it's surroundings are visited by great and snowy egrets, night and blue herons, neotropic cormorants, cardinals, woodpeckers, grebes and a whole lot of birds.
I use to go to this spot to practice panning birds in flight, since this ones usually return in the afternoon to a little island to get some rest. I used my D200 and my old manual focus AI Nikkor 400mm f/3.5 ED-IF. There's a somewhat greenish cast I can't get rid of, and it's a little underexposed to my taste, so I would love to get ideas as of how to get rid of that cast and how (if possible) to raise the exposure a bit more (I already added a bit) without adding too much noise.
Thanks in advance, glad to find this forum!
Welcome, Patricio! Very nice first post. I like the details and BG and might put the bird a bit lower in the frame. Please include some technical information in your posts, such as shutter speed, aperture and ISO. I look forward to more of your images.
Amazing capture with a manual focusing lens !!!! Would like to see the info since as you say it is a bit underexposed These birds depend on good light of best feather reproduction !!! I like the wing position and that you got the bird in front of you and not going away. Looking forward to many more !!!! Felicidades !!!!
Good job on the sharpness, and with a MF lens! As Axel mentioned a little more room at the top would be ideal.
I know what you mean about the color cast. There are many ways to correct WB. Without any neutral colors, black, gray, white it can be hard. I reposted with your image white balanced using the average methond. This is making a duplicate, blurring the image, then using that blurred dupe to set the gray point. I dont have the room here to give you step by step instructions but I did cover this is a past Newsletter : http://aptats.com/newsletter_7.html. If you have a chance take a look and you can join the newsletter list also.
The Avg WB method is very quick and takes only a few seconds.
Thanks for the comments! Robert, I tried your technique in a couple of tough shots and I instantly came up with at the very least a better starting point than my original, so thank you very much for sharing!
As of the manual focus lens... If there are enough Gb in the server to spare I can upload all the shots... :) I drema with the day I can afford an AF tele, but in the meantime, this old beast does the job!
Neotropic Cormorant
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