Black Bear Cubs in Tree 1

[Mike Hannisian]

I shot this image at the Anan Bear Observatory, Tongass NF, east of Wrangell, AK. The ABO is a platform above Anan Creek. When the Pink Salmon are running, many Black Bears and a lesser number of Brown Bears congregate to feed on the fish. There is a platform about 50 feet above the creek and a 4-6 person blind just above the water. According to the NFS rangers, the bears of both species are accustomed to seeing people on the platform and generally ignore them. The rangers have bear spray should a bear attempt to access the platform which is surrounded by a minimal (about 30 inch high) fence. I used a Canon 7D with a handheld Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 with a Canon 2.0x III teleconverter. My ISO was 2000, f/5.6, 1/250 with an EV 0f -0.67. I tried opening the exposure in ARC to get better detail in the left cub's body, but doing so made the face look artificial. As can be deduced from my ISO of 2000, ambient light levels were low.

[Harshad Barve]

May be sliver crop on RHS , excellent stuff
TFS

[Mark Wiseman]

Mike TFS, I am just interested to know wether you took an image in the vertical as I think the composition may have been easier to compose as the trunk of the tree takes away from the subjects. The cute factor is there, especially with the lower bear peeping at the lens from behind the trunk.
It must have been difficult so high up.

[Mike Hannisian]

Mark, I did not take any verticals of this pair as there were a lot of distracting elements below and above. So far as the height, these cubs were in a tree that was growing from a lower area so they were at just about my eye level. Thanks for your comments.

[Steve Uffman]

very nice...eye contact is fantastic..love the comp but I will leave to the experts about the crop...7D and 2000 ISO?

[Mike Hannisian]

very nice...eye contact is fantastic..love the comp but I will leave to the experts about the crop...7D and 2000 ISO?

It is not unusual for me to shoot at ISO of 3200 with the 7D (and 6400 with the iD Mk IV).

[Steve Uffman]

First very much like the image...Love the eyes and the pose....Cubs are of real interest to me since I have a trip to photo black bears in the Spring...the spring cubs are a primary driver for the opportunity....

understand the high iso with 1d mark iv , but your ISO experience on the 7D is very Interesting........I actually started out using auto Iso (and ISO expansion) on the 7d but found a great deal of noise beyond 800... so now I figure the max ISO for the situation and manipulate everything else to get a good exposure...I know several others that have had similar experiences with the 7d....in fact at one workshop I attended, pretty much everyone "normally" stopped at around 800 on the 7d.

yours looks good...need to learn your magic. ...Wonder if you have different settings in camera on noise reduction and such on higher ISOs....I think mine is set at standard or low....also any post processing techniques...I use LR 3 and more recently NIk Dfine for noise reduction.....any thoughts on how to take advantage of the higher ISOs would be welcome!


Note: A curious thing is that my wife has a t2i which she shoots in the basic mode....her ISO obviously then bounces all over...while the noise is evident, not as apparent as in the 7D..she had some great shots in Alaska last month for the Coastal bears in ever changing light...I marveled at how well that camera handled it for her needs....hmmmm?

[Dumay de Boulle]

Lovely eye contact and to get both is a bonus...IQ and sharpness is lacking somewhat.

[Marina Scarr]

The poses here are priceless, Mike. I am seeing a lue cast in this photo, esp in the blacks of the bears. I think removing it would improve the overall look of a very playful image.

[Stu Bowie]

Great eye contact from both, and just love the one on the right peeking around. Agree, taking a bit off the RHS will work.

[Mike Hannisian]

I agree with Marina that removing the blue cast is worth considering. However, I like the fact that there is a degree of softness in the image as, at least to me, this better imparts the feel of the Tongass NF.

[Morkel Erasmus]

Hi Mike. Welcome to the Wildlife section (don't recall seeing you post images here before, might have been before I became moderator ).

I was never afraid to use my 7D at higher ISO settings - I found the trick to be that you needed to ensure decent exposure to the RHS of the histogram to curb the noise levels which were quite high to begin with at ISO's higher than 1000.

I love the poses of the youngsters. Major nits have been covered - the most obvious ones that struck me immediately are the glaring blue/cyan cast on the black fur of the bears (and on the image as a whole as a matter of fact) and the prominent 'overdone' shadow recovery (presumably using the shadow/highlights tool?). This has degraded IQ in an image already shot in challenging conditions.

I disagree with you on the softness...it's fine if you want to convey the feeling of the scene as you remember it, but I would presume that has more to do with the soft feel of the forest and surrounding foliage as opposed to the bear cubs which would need to be sharp in any situation...

I did some work on it - and am curious as to your thoughts here...

I opened up the image and had to tweak heavily in "color balance" to get rid of the cast. I think I ended up with 3 points away from cyan and 3 points away from blue for shadows, highlights and midtones.
Then I selected the cubs and layered them, further desaturating the cyan channel (fully - thus 100) and the blue channel (about 40 points) to get rid of the rest of the cast.
I also darkened the BG layer and burned some of the shadows and highlights to try and counter the shadow recovery that was evident.
Lastly I sharpened the bears a tad using Smart Sharpen at 125% 0.2px

I think more can be achieved working with your original RAW file, but you get the idea...

Keep them coming!

[Steve Uffman]

Morkel, like your adjustments on the image...On the high ISO, I heard enough folks talk about the noisiness of the 7d at higher ISOs, I just shot lower and compensated after some of my early images had lots of noise...As I have becsme more knowledgeable about technique, I always try to 'expose to the right"- although mainly to preserve detail in the highlights.... I had not really thought of lower noise as being an additional benefit..but noise does show up in darker or underexposed areas-so makes sense. .....do you know how you have your setting c.Fn II 2 High ISO speed noise reduction set..mine is 1 low

thanks

[Morkel Erasmus]

.....do you know how you have your setting c.Fn II 2 High ISO speed noise reduction set..mine is 1 low

Hi Steve...hard to say as I sold my 7D and now shoot Nikon .
As a rule I normally set High ISO NR in-camera to zero since I prefer to have full control over the RAW output in the conversion process with LR3.

[Steve Uffman]

ah yes, I remember you are on on the dark side now...there is a disable option...I think I just need to go back and revisit plus looks like the reports on current NR software shows considerable improvement

[Mike Hannisian]

Thanks for the input. I also have found that exposing to the right helps reduce noise with the 7D (and with the 1D MK IV).