Great shots Conrad. These are looking drastically better in all aspects and especailly in pp or incamera jpg settings. The swallows show you've mastered the BIF skills, only would bump up EC by another +2/3 or so, but you've captured them well. Well done!
wing tong wrote:
Great shots Conrad. These are looking drastically better in all aspects and especailly in pp or incamera jpg settings. The swallows show you've mastered the BIF skills, only would bump up EC by another +2/3 or so, but you've captured them well. Well done!
Thanks Wing! That damn swallow was soooo hard to track! Haha!
Well, Conrad, you have mastered the art of fast capture very well. The swallows are very good and caught in full flight (done with 50D which makes it even harder ?), and so is the hummer interaction. To top it off, you've got an in-flight kingfisher too. I'd say that your last set of images would be hard to better.
Good man.
PetKal wrote:
Well, Conrad, you have mastered the art of fast capture very well. The swallows are very good and caught in full flight (done with 50D which makes it even harder ?), and so is the hummer interaction. To top it off, you've got an in-flight kingfisher too. I'd say that your last set of images would be hard to better.
Good man.
Thanks for the kind words Peter. I wouldn't say I've mastered anything. Just getting the feel of tracking smaller birds. The larger herons and egrets are easy now by comparison for sure! The 50D really forces you to keep the subject on the center AF point! I've also been trying very hard to keep the background as non-existent as possible either by shooting against the sky or keeping the bokeh to a maximum. You're NR then sharpening tip also helps in finishing the final product. I still have some snowy egret shots from yesterday that are so blown out that I could not recover any detail from them. I don't know what is more difficult, recovering the detail from a snowy or a blackbird! Haha! I think I'm going to try new places and increase the variety I've got. This has sure been a lot of fun!
Conrad Tan wrote:
I still have some snowy egret shots from yesterday that are so blown out that I could not recover any detail from them. I don't know what is more difficult, recovering the detail from a snowy or a blackbird!
Well, as long as you remember to:
(1) Start by exposing the bird right. To do that, use the spot or partial metering options, depending on the bird size in the viewfinder.
(2) Avoid stark contrast bird-background.
(3) Do not push levels too hard in photoshop. Once you attempt to fix major exposure problems, some funky colours and noise start to emerge, and the whole thing doesn't look plausible any more.
(4) Remember that the ambient light sometimes simply doesn't bring out feather detail or, more specifically, irredescence on a Hummer, Grackle, Starling etc. No photoshop action can create it from nothing.
Take this Cormorant as an example. Taken with the 400 f/5.6 today. There was a fairly strong sunlight coming from above, and I was looking into it, resulting in the bird's underside and its left flank being black. That's a kind of reality of what I saw. Any "recovery" in photoshop wouldn't work well, although one can perhaps try to fake it in a small web size image. Next time the light will hopefully be better, or one can bring a better beamer with them, if one believes in its use. I don't.
Phil, that is really neat that you know she is sitting on eggs. Just think of the images you can get once the egg's hatch. I will be looking forward to that!
I see you have a 70-200....that can be used for BIF
PetKal wrote:
Well, as long as you remember to:
(1) Start by exposing the bird right. To do that, use the spot or partial metering options, depending on the bird size in the viewfinder.
(2) Avoid stark contrast bird-background.
(3) Do not push levels too hard in photoshop. Once you attempt to fix major exposure problems, some funky colours and noise start to emerge, and the whole thing doesn't look plausible any more.
(4) Remember that the ambient light sometimes simply doesn't bring out feather detail or, more specifically, irredescence on a Hummer, Grackle, Starling etc. No photoshop action can create it from nothing.
Take this Cormorant as an example. Taken with the 400 f/5.6 today. There was a fairly strong sunlight coming from above, and I was looking into it, resulting in the bird's underside and its left flank being black. That's a kind of reality of what I saw. Any "recovery" in photoshop wouldn't work well, although one can perhaps try to fake it in a small web size image. Next time the light will hopefully be better, or one can bring a better beamer with them, if one believes in its use. I don't. ...Show more →
Nice Cormorant Peter. I'll note the suggestions you made above next time I go out and shoot.... which will be today after work! Hehe... I am a little to liberal when trying to recover color. I often find I introduce non-plausible color into a lot of my photos. It looks "un-professional". Haha! Again thanks Peter!
Ok some nice news to share....I got two blue ribbons in the State Comp for PPANJ
Just Ducky
Bad Boy (This is my youngest son Matthew)
Thats really cool Noelle! Congrats! You have a good lookin young boy there! And the ducky turned out very nice. Sorry I'm not responding we're really busy at work today. But again congrats on the TWO blu ribbons!
