You have great interaction here and those red eyes are awesome, Daniel. The whites do seem to be blown in the brighter areas. I don’t know if you can pull them down in your raw editor, but it’s worth a try. The second image seems to be suffering from very high noise throughout which isn’t making a lot of sense to me given it looks as if it was made in pretty bright light. If it’s a very large crop it could be suffering from sharpening artifacts.
Both are wonderful opportunities! Two issues here should be easy to work on – the bright whites and the different white balances of the two. I think they are worth going back to the raw files to see if the whites can be subdued – LR is up to the task, and the Highlights and Shadows sliders are powerful – watching the histogram as you adjust. If nothing else, a linear profile (from Tony Kuyper) can pull back another stop or so in the whites. The two have different white balances, also, with the second warmer. I would set both to the same – easy to sync in LR. That will make the water colors match. A big crop is always challenging but the NR in the latest LR is as good as it gets. Sharpening is still very problematic in any software.
Daniel: lots of good comments which I won’t repeat. When using Auto ISO on bright days and on subjects with whites, dial in some negative exposure compensation. A setting of -2/3 to -1 will prevent clipping of the whites.
Hi Daniel, love the interaction you have captured. What a great scene of the adults feeding the chicks. I shoot in full manual mode with highlight alerts turned on (blinkies) and adjust settings til nothing is being blown out. I have a friend who uses auto ISO and pairs that with highlight tone priority which is the Canon term for an in camera algorithm which keeps the whites from being over exposed. I believe the Nikon term for this is Active D-Lighting. Just FYI if you want to give it a try. Wonderful images.
Allen, thanks for your input. I set the ISO limits on the Z8 to a range of 64-6000 and then “auto”. All of these photos were shot at ISO of less than 200. I selected the f-stop and shutter speed based on need for DOF and capturing motion. Active D-Lighting is only for JPEG and I shoot exclusively RAW. BTW - I have also looked on line for published photos of these birds and think that the necks are indeed very white and about the same intensity as in my photos, so keeping them from being blown out must be a common problem. As you point out, the value of these photos is the story they tell.
