Birds Yesterdays Snap

Photofarmer · Aug 31, 2022

Black shouldered kite Australia. Straight out of camera. No good at editing don’t know w hat I’m doing.

Canon EOS R6
RF100-400mm F5.6-8 IS USM + EXTENDER RF1.4x
560.0 mm
ƒ/11
1/1600 sec
ISO 6400

Kwazy · Sep 1, 2022

Very nice shot!

Photofarmer · Sep 1, 2022

Thanks mate.
Funny when your a learner, I would have no idea what to change in that with Lightroom etc

Edit a question should my shutter speed be lower? Chose that in case he flew of. 1/800 would have done it?

The above is my standard bird setting to start with and iso always auto cause I don’t really know what I’m doing with iso.

Kwazy · Sep 1, 2022

1/800 would've gotten it, but like you wrote, if he had flown off, you would've had a blurry shot. Compromises everywhere. It's better to shoot fast, as it makes sharper photos, but I keep catching myself messing up perfect opportunities because I wanted more light and shot too slow. It's tough. You think it'll be fast enough, but when you pull it up on the big screen it ends up having been too slow!

You can try playing around with brightness, contrast, and saturation. Those three give you the most noticeable change for small adjustments and all editing programs have them. But I like it as it is. Maybe would get rid of the noise, but that Topaz is pricy.

Photofarmer · Sep 1, 2022

Kwazy said:
1/800 would've gotten it, but like you wrote, if he had flown off, you would've had a blurry shot. Compromises everywhere. It's better to shoot fast, as it makes sharper photos, but I keep catching myself messing up perfect opportunities because I wanted more light and shot too slow. It's tough. You think it'll be fast enough, but when you pull it up on the big screen it ends up having been too slow!

You can try playing around with brightness, contrast, and saturation. Those three give you the most noticeable change for small adjustments and all editing programs have them. But I like it as it is. Maybe would get rid of the noise, but that Topaz is pricy.

Thanks. Always open to helpful advice

Kwazy · Sep 1, 2022

One thing you could practice (if you're not doing it yet) is shutter-priority mode (or flexible priority Fv, if you also want a specific aperture). You can have your shutter speed at 1/800 while the bird is chillin, and then 1/1600 is only a flick of thumb away scrolling the wheel. I think you can usually tell that he's about to take off, and have maybe half a second to change the speed? Or at least take a few shots at different speeds and then switch back to 1/1600+ to wait for it to take off.

Some food for thought.

GeraldHerd · Sep 11, 2022

The angle the light is coming from is working against you here. As a general rule, life gets much better if your shadow is pointing almost straight at the bird (say, plus or minus 10 degrees). Here, the light is coming from the left , resulting in one eye and white breast heavily shadowed, and most of the white head feathers being blown out. The pose and composition look ok to me. Auto iso is a good default, imo. A shutter speed of 1/1600 is more appropriate for birds in flight, so 1/200 or 1/400 would worked here, and might have reduced any noise problems. Now, 1/1600 would theoretically eliminate motion blur if you tried for a shot of bird leaving the perch, but you would have had to be set to high speed continuous shooting mode, be zoomed out to include another couple of feet of sky to the right, and would likely have come away with a shot of tailfeathers leaving the frame. My approach to processing in LR would be : move highlights slider far left, shadow slider towards right, and see where there is and isn’t feather detail. Select ”sky”, then fiddle with the “hue” and contrast to deepen sky blue and try for some puffy white clouds.

Birds Yesterdays Snap

Photofarmer

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Kwazy

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Photofarmer

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Kwazy

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Photofarmer

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Kwazy

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GeraldHerd

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