A great selection of birds, Conrad. Good capture and framing. The exposure still requires some work. Remember, partial/spot metering is your friend. However, the difficult crow was exposed well.
Also, shooting a bird against whitish sky seldom yields good exposure. Similarly, shooting into a very reflective water surface is a problem too. So it's not only a matter of getting the metering on a bird right, one should also wait for good light and background conditions which enable a well exposed and delineated image.
Softer sunlight and darker skies (water surface) generally work well.
The best scenario is if one has some nice coloured vegetation for background so as to result in well coloured bokeh.
Conrad Tan wrote:
@ Geert: Great shots with the 1.4TC! Do you shoot with manual focus? Because autofocus does not work for me with the 50D and the 400mm.
Thank you ! Yes this one was shot with manual focus.
Here's a "different" bird shot with the 400 I had a couple of years ago. It was, and continues to be a great lens but I needed more flexibility so I went with the 100-400. BIF are fast but JIF (Jets In Flight) are faster...
Sweet bird Chris! Every year the Blue Angels come to the San Francisco Bay for Fleet Week. Now I'm ready for them with the right gear!
Ok Peter... "splain" to me this thing called partial metering. I know about spot metering. Thanks in advance Peter! And I'll try to find some vegetation background before I shoot but in and around my locations there isn't much of anything green in color.
PetKal wrote:
A great selection of birds, Conrad. Good capture and framing. The exposure still requires some work. Remember, partial/spot metering is your friend. However, the difficult crow was exposed well.
Also, shooting a bird against whitish sky seldom yields good exposure. Similarly, shooting into a very reflective water surface is a problem too. So it's not only a matter of getting the metering on a bird right, one should also wait for good light and background conditions which enable a well exposed and delineated image.
Softer sunlight and darker skies (water surface) generally work well.
The best scenario is if one has some nice coloured vegetation for background so as to result in well coloured bokeh....Show more →
I find for exposure that using evaluative metering and compensating for different background/subject combination's is the most simple formula I have ever ran across. If you can do yourself a favor and get a copy of Arthur Morris Birds as Art II on CD. It is a PDF and the part on exposure has 6 situations, that's it just 6 that pretty much cinch exposure. I find it has been a huge help and really simplifies things. Of course it does not cover every single possibility, but damn near close.
Btw, You nailed the exposure on the harbor seal imho!
Here's a "different" bird shot with the 400 I had a couple of years ago. It was, and continues to be a great lens but I needed more flexibility so I went with the 100-400. BIF are fast but JIF (Jets In Flight) are faster...
Awesome! Big jets against a blue sky are pretty easy if you ask me. I mean no offense, but try focusing on a flying duck against a background of woods or changing contrast subjects.
Conrad Tan wrote:
Ok Peter... "splain" to me this thing called partial metering. I know about spot metering. Thanks in advance Peter! And I'll try to find some vegetation background before I shoot but in and around my locations there isn't much of anything green in color.
Conrad, both of your cameras should have the "partial" metering mode on the control dial, in addition to evaluative, center weighted and spot metering. The camera manuals should also contain a little blurb on the way metering is done in each of the modes.
For an animal/bird shooter partial metering can be very useful.
I'll see if i can hunt down that CD. I still have trouble with exposure, sometimes spot gets it right, other times evaluative gets it. I think I used spot with the seal. Thanks!
chupacabra31 wrote:
I find for exposure that using evaluative metering and compensating for different background/subject combination's is the most simple formula I have ever ran across. If you can do yourself a favor and get a copy of Arthur Morris Birds as Art II on CD. It is a PDF and the part on exposure has 6 situations, that's it just 6 that pretty much cinch exposure. I find it has been a huge help and really simplifies things. Of course it does not cover every single possibility, but damn near close.
Btw, You nailed the exposure on the harbor seal imho!
chupacabra31 wrote:
I find for exposure that using evaluative metering and compensating for different background/subject combination's is the most simple formula I have ever ran across. ...
+1
My 40d's EC is "stuck" on +1/3 for all photography (besides just BIF), it's usually perfect at that setting and if not, it is easier to bring down exposure in PP than it is to bring it up. When shooting 90% of birds which have a dark coat against a bright sky or water, that EC goes up to +2/3 or +1. White birds like the egrets get 0 EC but I will usually still have to bring the exposure down in PP. It's pretty simple most of the time unless you go from an egret to a coot and back again often which actually happened to me once and I forgot to change the EC setting.
By the way, if you need to save your exposure after the shot, PP is still a very good solution but watch out for the noise.
Conrad Tan wrote:
Now do you use live view when you do manual focus? Because I don't have much success with just the viewfinder. (Maybe my eyes are oof haha!)
