Black-headed Grosbeak

Gallery: AvianPosted July 7, 2016162 views7 comments

One from a week and a half ago. I finally got one of these to pose for a few moments in nice light-almost too nice. I had +2/3 stop exposure compensation and I still had to boost it a full stop or more in processing.

7DII, Sigma 150-600 C @ 600 mm, hand held, f/6.3, 1/1000, iso 800, aperture priority, pattern metering, +2/3 EV. Processed in LR5 & CS6. Cropped to 7.8 MP from a horizontal original. Taken at 5:36 AM on June 26th.

Comments and criticisms are welcome and appreciated.

Thanks,

Comments

7 comments

Comment posted by Allen Brooks on July 8, 2016 at 11:02 AM

I like the pose and perch against the white background; a neat portrait look. As usual, good detail in the face and nice catch light. The lighting does look nice, but I wonder if the reds need to be toned down a bit.

Registered on July 27, 2011, 262 Posts, 2597 Comments

Comment posted by Nate Chappell on July 8, 2016 at 5:56 PM

Very nice high key image Dennis, great eye contact and head turn. devil

Registered on February 1, 2006, 1158 Posts, 19528 Comments

Comment posted by David Bogener on July 8, 2016 at 7:21 PM

Nice head turn and eye contact. Challenging exposure, but this high key works.

Registered on October 30, 2013, 417 Posts, 1255 Comments

Comment posted by David Schoen on July 10, 2016 at 1:56 PM

This is a nice high key exposure. The Black Headed Grosbeak is very difficult to get on a perch for a reasonable amount of time to take a good image. You had a challenging lighting situation here. I think you made the most of it but I might tone it down just a tiny bit.

Registered on November 6, 2006, 1213 Posts, 4587 Comments

Comment posted by Kurt Bowman on July 10, 2016 at 3:35 PM

Nice perch, head turn and good detail Dennis! I assume you were shooting in Evaluative metering based on your comments. I am sure you already know this, but with that dark of a subject and that bright of a BG, it always fools the metering into thinking it needs to speed up your SS causing an underexposed image. This holds true for the opposite situation (bright subject in dark BG) if you are using evaluative metering. Sometimes I am surprised at how much compensation you need, but those situations always need exposure compensations.

Registered on June 19, 2008, 1005 Posts, 8028 Comments

Comment posted by May Haga on July 11, 2016 at 6:09 PM

Nice head turn, great light. Lovely image.
May

Registered on February 22, 2007, 714 Posts, 8470 Comments

Comment posted by S Govindarajan on July 12, 2016 at 11:50 PM

Great pose from the grosbeak, Dennis. The highkey works well for this image. I too am surprised how much I end up tuning the exposure to get all the details in the subject.

Registered on April 19, 2008, 115 Posts, 1921 Comments