Snowy With a Secret: Can You Figure It Out??? ** ANSWER REVEALED **

[Doug Brown]

We were alone the day we set out to find the Snowy Owls. It was cold and raining, we had quite a bit of gear, and we weren't entirely sure where the birds were. As we came around a bend, I saw a white shape in the distance; I was sure it was a Snowy Owl. We headed for the white spot, and sure enough it was a Snowy! As we neared the bird, another Owl flew in unexpectedly. I quickly deployed my tripod and squeezed off a few frames before the bird landed; there was no time to adjust my camera settings. Here is the result. Needless to say, my exposure was off. Can anyone guess what I had to do to get this frame presentable? Don't cheat by looking at the EXIF data.

[Maya Raut]

Doug I really can not guess but this looks a fine image to me...this looks like a heavy crop ...I am eager to see how the original was and what you did to get this result...

[Kerry Perkins]

Doug, you managed to get a great capture given the circumstances. I don't know about the secret though... Only thing I can think of is that there is some chroma noise in the shadows, which usually comes with high ISO, so maybe you overexposed the image and had to use a lot of the "recover" slider?

[Mital Patel]

doug in no way i am in position to calculate or count things on your image still to learn lot to get to even this and you are asking better presentable than this my friend

let me try as i see the frame i think the focus locked on to the front height brown grass blades which may possibly the reason that you got higher expo by metering that area ..
out of processing techniques may be little more shutter value to grab more sharp acquisition of owl?

friends i am no expert just assuming for the game challenge doug made here and i think would be good to follow for learning purpose.

[Mital Patel]

btw at close inspection as i have never seen this chap ever but highly wish to. came to know about something.

Have you made up the tail ? i see a very distinct sync between all tail tips seems this is your secret ?

[dankearl]

I'll will take a guess and say you way overexposed and thus the noise on the bird in recovery.
Great comp but lacks your usual IQ.

[Jamie Douglas]

Apart from using the recovery slider or a linear burn (would that even work?) then I am not sure what you did. Looks great though whatever you did.

[arash_hazeghi]

it was a great afternoon despite tough conditions, I know the answer so I let everyone else guess.

[Vikram Agrawal]

beautiful. he seems to be gliding effortlessly.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Doug the image looks pretty darned good to me. There seems to be practically no noise at all on the background but there is some i.e. a little in the subject and I do not find it at all intrusive. maybe you had a higher than necessay ISO setting or perhaps you had underexposed the image?? Another wild guess maybe you had your Colour Temperature incorrectly set, the bird does not look as snowy white as someof the other recent shots but that may well be due to ambient light conditions. No in short I don't know... but I do know it is a fine shot.

[Karl Egressy]

My guess is that you added canvas to the right of the picture as ariginally the wing tip on the right was clipped. (left wing)
Beautiful image, Doug.

[Stu Bowie]

OK, without even looking at the other responses, the only thing wrong in camera was that the snowy was very under exposed. Looking underneath the snowy looks like a lot of recovery. I think the BG was as in camera.

To be honest, if you hadnt mentioned anything, this looks like a normal well captured image.

[Doug Brown]

A couple of you are definitely on the right track. Full reveal a little later today. Keep those guesses coming in the meantime!

[Doug Brown]

Answer: I was underexposed in camera.

New question: how much did I bring up the exposure in post?

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Doug, not sure how you processed it...looks pretty good to me. great sense of habitat and rain adds to the mood. excellent placement of the owl in the frame. loved this one.

[Doug Brown]

Now for the truth about the exposure. Definitely not one of my shining exposure moments, but at least I got a sharp frame. I had to raise the exposure 2.5- 3 stops in post to produce the image you see above! This level of underexposure was entirely unintentional, but I simply didn't have time to do anything but grab a few frames. However the light was marginal for my entire Snowy Owl encounter and I found myself deliberately underexposing (by maybe 1/2 stop) to get more shutter speed and/or DOF. I was secure in the knowledge that with a white subject I would be able to easily bring up the exposure in post. This is a technique that I find helpful when the light stinks. Here's what the unprocessed frame looks like.

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

WOW, Doug. That says a lot about how much you can push these 1D mark IV raw files in post. You also must have used some good NR technique. what was the ISO BTW?

[Doug Brown]

WOW, Doug. That says a lot about how much you can push these 1D mark IV raw files in post. You also must have used some good NR technique. what was the ISO BTW?

That's one of the huge advantages of the Mark IV over the 7D. I've posted on that before. I shot this at 600mm, f/6.3, 1/2000, ISO 800.

[Luis Villablanca]

Excellent work under those conditions, Doug. I love that fanned tail.

The EXIF says it was shot at ISO 800. Wouldn't it have been better shooting it directly at ISO 3200-6400?
I thought the camera could do a better job in pushing ISO than the software implementations.

[Doug Brown]

Excellent work under those conditions, Doug. I love that fanned tail.

The EXIF says it was shot at ISO 800. Wouldn't it have been better shooting it directly at ISO 3200-6400?
I thought the camera could do a better job in pushing ISO than the software implementations.

I had no time to adjust camera settings, as we had not even started to set up our gear when this Snowy flew in. Also this is an extreme example. I don't know if it's better to bump the ISO at the time of capture or push the exposure in post. I'm sure someone will chime in with the answer.

[arash_hazeghi]

I had no time to adjust camera settings, as we had not even started to set up our gear when this Snowy flew in. Also this is an extreme example. I don't know if it's better to bump the ISO at the time of capture or push the exposure in post. I'm sure someone will chime in with the answer.

Luis is right, it's better to do in-camera (direct signal amplification pre demosaic) but here you had no time to adjust anything...
well done given the challanging conditions

[Luis Villablanca]

Sorry, I misunderstood you earlier. I thought you had done it on purpose.
Thanks for the explanation.

I had no time to adjust camera settings, as we had not even started to set up our gear when this Snowy flew in. Also this is an extreme example. I don't know if it's better to bump the ISO at the time of capture or push the exposure in post. I'm sure someone will chime in with the answer.