Evening Grossbeak

Clayton,
Yes, tough exposure. I am not the one to give you help here. Over all I like the image.
You had mentioned checking out your rig on an earlier posting and I did -Looks first rate.

Dan

I like the inquisitive pose, as you said a very tough exposure here with the shadows and the whites. With some fill flash you may have been able to even out the exposure some by reducing the ambient exposure and using the fill to light the shadows.

Great detail and pose . The whites don't bother me as that face pulls me in

Nice image, good detail except for the white, but not much can be done about it. Thanks for sharing.

I love this forum. And Rich, you are a mind reader. I did in fact ask him to move a little, and thus the inquisitive look. And, I draw the line at one pass of the burn tool. Unless it's happy hour!

I really like this photo Clayton. Your right about the whites being blown out but the rest of the bird has nice color and detail. The BG looks great, I like the color and it looks nice and clean for 640 ISO. Any post processing to eliminate BG noise? Also what size lens? Once again, great job.

I love these grosbeaks, Clayton. great colors and nice and sharp with a really nice bg. I think a tiny bit more room in front would be nice if you have it. when I shoot EVGRs in direct light I tend to start off at -2/3 EC to keep the whites, then adjust from there if necessary.

These are a tough bird to expose properly, Clayton. On these high contrast ones, it actually works better if you can get them without direct sunlight (we are blessed with plenty of cloudy days around here ) . I really like the pose in this one and the eye is compelling.

It is tough to get all the colors when they lie in both extremes. You can try to recover some of the whites in post processing as others have suggested. nevertheless, this is a great image with an excellent complementary background. I like the sharpness and the expression on the grosbeak. The blue in the RHB corner is a tad distracting, but no biggie.

Very good job with this shot in prettty contrasty lighting. It's too bad he didn't live up to his name and come by in the evening instead of midday. Regardless of the light I would be pleased with this shot. I have never even been fortunate enough to see one of these guys.

Nice work, Clayton. The yellows are gorgeous. I miss seeing these birds - they were sporadic visitors when I lived in Virginia. They don't get down to Florida much.

Thanks everyone. It was one of those days Dennis when the sun was shining one second, cloudy and snowing the next,then sunny and snowing. A typical Central Oregon day! No NR at all on this one John. The 50D handles the noise pretty well as long as you don't under expose. I used the Sigma 150-500 OS on my chair pod with OS turned off.

Clayton,
very nice shot. I especially like the pose and the facial expression of this nice bird.

These are tough guys, and that white patch on the primaries is notoriously hard to expose.
For one of my images of this species, although it wasn't blown completely, I did employ some light burning to bring out more detail.