Controlling whites - how would you have gone about this shot?

http://www.paulhillion.com/photo_1161780.html

I took this last evening about 6.30, the sun was still very bright. Didn't have much time to think about settings as it was more of a grab shot but still I always seem to have trouble with these sort of shots so I'd apprciate a bit of advice on controlling the whites. I'm not at home to look at the settings but if I remember correctly I tried both manual & AV mode - in manual I spot metered of the white breast and in AV I set the exposure comp to -2/3. All attempts came out pretty dark as I'd expect and I had a fair bit of work to do in PS to get this end result. Looking at it on my work screen it doesn't look quite right, what do you think

Paul,

In future, can you please post the photo on UKNP rather than embedding a link.

Cheers

T

Ah the good old limitations of dynamic range suffered by most digital SLR sensors,

Probably the only solution is to shoot RAW process image initially for correct ambient exposure (which will blow the chest whites), then do a second raw conversion at -2ev or thereabouts and do a manual HDR merge having done a colour selection to mask out all except the near white tones as per the Adobe paper highlight recovery (second but last tutorial listed)

Sorry Tom, will do. Thanks Mike.

Just expose for the whites and bring the shadows back up a bit when you convert the RAW back home. Use the shadow/highlight tool in photoshop, it works very well for this type of shot and should save the need to mess about combining two exposures together.

It is diffult to tell what the lighting conditions were like at the time of shooting because of the post processing work, but generally if it is sunny with shadows I would have shot this using a "sunny f16" exposure in manually exposure mode and dialled in minus 1/3 of a stop to hold the highlights. By this time in the evening, though, the contrast range has often diminished to the point where compensation is no longer required. You don't say what camera you are using, but with a Canon 1D series body the subject is probably big enough in the frame to have gotten good results using AV-exposure mode without any compensation (though this is probably the least reliable method of assessing the exposure). For spot metering in manual, you should have set the exposure compensation to +1 and 2/3 or +2. No highlight recovery in Photoshop should be needed with this image if you set the correct exposure.

Just as Richard says expose for the whites. I have 2/3 dialled in at all times.
When the sun is bright and you have bright whites you will need as much as 1 1/2 stops.comp. This bird looks fairly immobile so you probably had time to experiment a bit.

Major.

Thanks all. Unfortunately a dog walker disturbed this and the other gulls a few seconds after this shot. I'll go back one evening soon (if we see the sun again!) and try to have a proper practise.