Exposing to the right

[Wendy Kates]

Hi all...I tried to expose to the right in this image, but when I opened it in Camera Raw, I found that a fair amount of data in the breast of the bird was clipped. So I moved the exposure slider to the left, which of course resulted in the wings being underexposed. Once I converted it to a tiff file, I tried to correct it with Curves, but I'm not sure I was successful. I suppose the problem may have been that I shot the photo at about 2pm, in full sun, and should have used a smaller aperture. Would appreciate your comments / critiques, as well as insight into identifying this bird! Shot with a Canon Xsi, 300mm f/4 lens with 1.4 extender, at 420 mm, f 5/6, 1/200, ISO 200, tripod. Thanks!

Wendy

[Roger Clark]

Hello Wendy,

Does your raw converter have a recovery slider? (CS5 does if you are using that). If so, use it to try and recover highlights. I suggest try the recovery slider first, then try the exposure slider.

What metering did you use when you made the image?

Roger

[Kerry Perkins]

Hi Wendy, it is often a fine line between exposing to the right and overexposing. I find the Canon DSLRs to be very sensitive to white and try to expose "just" to the right. You had a very difficult lighting situation here, and one that should be avoided - bright highlights and dark shadows. Most cameras cannot accommodate that wide of a dynamic range. Softer light would make this image stronger and a faster shutter speed would have helped with both exposure and sharpness. I see that you used a tripod, would expect a bit more sharpness in that case.

[Hayath Mohammed]

Adding onto the fantastic tips and feedback.
IMHO when shooting birds which have a fair bit of whites, it is best to shoot at 0EV if not -1/3rd with evaluative metering and then use "Fill light" during PP for the darker areas :)

The image has a nice feel with the sidelight and hint of breeze

[Joseph Cala]

Wendy, since nobody else has chimed in....this is a male House Sparrow.

[John Chardine]

Hi Wendy- Good advice above. I agree Hayath that the Fill light slider in ACR is excellent for selectively filling the darker tones.

A few other things to mention- you have extreme side-light here which is giving you the very uneven lighting effect. IMO it would have been beneficial to move so that you had the light source coming more from behind you than the side. The light doesn't have to be directly behind you. Note that the body angle of the bird is slightly away from you and the head is parallel to the body so it is away from you as well. Do you have any with a better head angle- turned CCW a little towards you?

[Kerry Perkins]

Wendy, I forgot to add - nice background!

[Wendy Kates]

Hi All,

Thank you so much for all of your valuable input. Roger...I use CS4, and do have a recovery slider. I used evaluative metering for this shot. I'm posting a shot with a slightly better angle as John suggested. I used the recovery slider, and fill light (slightly), and then modified exposure, as Roger suggested. This all resulted in an image that looked a little washed out to me, so I bumped up saturation. I sharpened it in both Camera Raw and with Unsharp Mask. Overall, it seems like an improvement over the last image...let me know what you think.

Wendy

[Roger Clark]

Hi Wendy,

I like the new image with the better head angle. The chest seems too bright. It sounds like the raw conversion did just fine. Next I would select the breast area and darken it, then select the eye/head area and light it, then the head + back and lighten a little. That would reduce the large dynamic range, then on the overall image, curves tool: make an S-shaped transfer to boost contrast. This is a high phase angle view (sun to bird to camera angle). Better would have been to move to the left to get more of a front view with the sun coming over a shoulder.

Roger

[Wendy Kates]

Thanks, Roger. For selecting areas to lighten: which tool do you find the most useful? I've been using the magic wand tool, but I have difficulty using it to select precisely what I want to select.

Wendy

[John Chardine]

Hi Wendy- I use quick masking to make selections. In Photoshop:

1. Press q to enter quick mask mode.
2. Press b to use the brush tool. Make sure the brush has zero hardness (soft), 100% flow and 100% opacity, and choose the size you need ([ and ] keys do this). Also make sure the foreground colour is black.
3. Paint over the area you want to select or not select. I usually paint over the smaller of the two- less work.
4. Press q to exit quick mask and you will see the marching ants around everything you didn't paint over (mask). You can always invert the selection with Shift-command/control-i.

With a soft brush this will give you nice soft edges to the selection and you won't see a hard line between manipulated and unmanipulated areas of the image.

[Roger Clark]

Hi Wendy,

I sometimes use the magic wand tool, but usually for a task like this, I simply circle the area with the lasso tool, then do refine edge. It is very quick.

Roger

[Wendy Kates]

John and Roger...thanks so much for your input. I'm really glad that I found BPN: I've probably learned more about shooting and processing images in the last couple of weeks than in the past two years!!

Wendy