You Looking at Me?

[Randy Given]

7D, 300mm + 1.4xII, f/8, 1/640, ISO 400, LR3 crop and denoise (luminance).

[Kerry Perkins]

Randy, this image is underexposed by about a full stop. What happened? How did you meter? Also very soft with no detail. Were you handholding the lens?

[Randy Given]

Yeah, a lot of things wrong with it. Was just about to pull it when I saw your post.

I still have to calibrate my lens, I'm wondering about its focus.

Metering was evaluative, but the area was much larger.

Certainly not my best, so wanted to pull it, but don't think that I can.

[Kerry Perkins]

Randy, if you don't mind I think it is better to leave the post here and talk about what went wrong. We all learn from each others attempts, whether they lead to success or not.

[Jeff Cashdollar]

Randy,

I agree with Kerry, believe me I have made every mistake in the book learn something every week.

Let's start with the techs, I too use ISO 400 and have a 7D,..nice body. The 300MM prime is a nice lens and you have a good kit. With the 1.4 TC you have a 420 focal length not to mention the 1.6 sensor crop factor. As you know, the histogram is a critical part of digital photography. Try and spread information in the first two stops (on right side, right to left). I have read that the first two stops contain over 70% of the images tonality. In this image you probably had little to no data in these stops and underexposed the image. Anyway, check the histogram, lot's of folks use AV mode, Al Servo, AF and Evaluative metering. That way you can add light via exposure compensation. The book that started it all for me and many others is The "Art of Bird Photography" by Artie Morris. Check out the Education and Tutorial Forum and look for a thread named "My Pictures Don't Look Like That",..link below.

http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...e-photographer.