Posted by Larry Corbett on November 5, 2006 at 5:50 PM
Taken at Slimbridge
Some might argue I've blown the highlights, Shelducks are always a dificult species to expose especially in bright sunlight, and there's no time to bracket when a duck is hurtling in to land at 60mph, you just lock the autofocus on the bird, press the button and keep panning and hope you get it all in the frame
Any advice on how to bring out the detail in the whites would be most welcome, they are there, when I processed the Raw my emphasis was on bringing the eye out from the dark head plumage
Canon EOS 1D MARK II, 300 f/2.8 + 2xII Extender, f5.6 @ 1/1300 ISO 320
Ah, so that's how it's done.
A 1200 with 2x wouldn't even get you close to them here.......I blame jet skiers for putting the fear of god in to them here, not a problem at Slimbridge I'm sure.
Nice one.... white are hot (I'm in an argumentative mood ), very difficult bird to get the exposure right, assume you were in manual exp mode?
try two conversions, one for the whites, the other for the rest and use a layer mask, you should then with a brush set to low opacity be able to gently brush detail into the whites...
All the best
Posted by Sean Bolton on November 6, 2006 at 2:07 PM
Hi Larry
This is an excellent flight shot, well caught and well composed which is very difficult with fast moving birds.
To me this shot looks over exposed, the background looks too bright, and you have blown the whites in the shelduck.
Did you manually meter the exposure?
Generally for this type of shot and subject I would set my camera to evaluative metering with -1/3rd or -2/3 compensation. Canon cameras tend to overexpose when there is a large dynamic range in the scene.
cheers
Sean
Posted by Larry Corbett on November 6, 2006 at 5:53 PM
Luckily for me I bought the last 2 months Practical Photography Mags (which I still hadn't read), one has an aritcle on blending exposures and the other has an article on shadow/highlights
Anyhow I revisited the raw file and processed it underexposed by 2 stops, it seemed very dark but the detail was in the whites, I then used shadows, highlights, midtone contrast and colour correction to bring the detail back in the rest of the image, but the head was still very dark, I then saved the Tiff, made a copy of it and then opened both tiffs, then lightened one of the images to reveal as much eye detail as I dare.
Then used select all and copied the lighter image to the clip board, selected the darker image whith the detail in the whites and pasted the lighter image on to the top of it which created a new layer in the darker image.
I then selected the darker image and used the eraser to rub out the dark head to reveal the ligher head below. then flattened the layers and here you have it.
Looks much better I must say, but it took me a good hour, In future I will only carry out this procedure if I think it's a really good image. I came back from Slimbridge with over 400 images..I could be sat at this computer a looooong time....
Discussion
4 repliesSome might argue I've blown the highlights, Shelducks are always a dificult species to expose especially in bright sunlight, and there's no time to bracket when a duck is hurtling in to land at 60mph, you just lock the autofocus on the bird, press the button and keep panning and hope you get it all in the frame
Any advice on how to bring out the detail in the whites would be most welcome, they are there, when I processed the Raw my emphasis was on bringing the eye out from the dark head plumage
Canon EOS 1D MARK II, 300 f/2.8 + 2xII Extender, f5.6 @ 1/1300 ISO 320
A 1200 with 2x wouldn't even get you close to them here.......I blame jet skiers for putting the fear of god in to them here, not a problem at Slimbridge I'm sure.
John
Nice one.... white are hot (I'm in an argumentative mood
try two conversions, one for the whites, the other for the rest and use a layer mask, you should then with a brush set to low opacity be able to gently brush detail into the whites...
All the best
This is an excellent flight shot, well caught and well composed which is very difficult with fast moving birds.
To me this shot looks over exposed, the background looks too bright, and you have blown the whites in the shelduck.
Did you manually meter the exposure?
Generally for this type of shot and subject I would set my camera to evaluative metering with -1/3rd or -2/3 compensation. Canon cameras tend to overexpose when there is a large dynamic range in the scene.
cheers
Sean
Anyhow I revisited the raw file and processed it underexposed by 2 stops, it seemed very dark but the detail was in the whites, I then used shadows, highlights, midtone contrast and colour correction to bring the detail back in the rest of the image, but the head was still very dark, I then saved the Tiff, made a copy of it and then opened both tiffs, then lightened one of the images to reveal as much eye detail as I dare.
Then used select all and copied the lighter image to the clip board, selected the darker image whith the detail in the whites and pasted the lighter image on to the top of it which created a new layer in the darker image.
I then selected the darker image and used the eraser to rub out the dark head to reveal the ligher head below. then flattened the layers and here you have it.
Looks much better I must say, but it took me a good hour, In future I will only carry out this procedure if I think it's a really good image. I came back from Slimbridge with over 400 images..I could be sat at this computer a looooong time....
Thanks everyone for your advice.