This pair of Red-breasted Mergansers, were photographed at the Back River, in Old Lyme, Ct. I sat down on the boat lunch and weighted for them to come to me. The shot is handheld and cropped by 60% in a 16by9 frame. I adjusted the Exposure, highlights and blacks in lightroom.
Thank you for stopping by.
Peter
What technical feedback would you like if any?
Canon EOS 7D Mark II, Shooting Date/Time 04/02/20 08:42:24
Shooting Mode Aperture-Priority AE, Tv(Shutter Speed) 1/2500
Av(Aperture Value) 8.0, Metering Mode Evaluative Metering
ISO Speed 1000, Lens 150-600mm F5-6.3 DG OS HSM | Contemporary 015
Focal Length 531.0mm, Image Quality RAW, AF Mode AI Servo AF
(If backgrounds have been removed, etc. please be honest with your techniques to help others learn)
If you would like your image to be eligible for a feature on the NPN Instagram (@NaturePhotoNet), add the tag ‘ig’ and leave your Instagram username below.
Hi Peter
I am so glad that you are going out to shoot. Nice to see a couple together in this day of social distancing
Sharpness - the birds are moving and in different planes - so you can expect a difference - the shutter speed of 1/2500 seems ok - you can try Topaz Sharpen AI
Exposure - when you have so much bright water, aperture priority will result in these mid tone birds getting darker - unless you add exposure compensation. The darker 40% background balances this fortunately. For something like this I would manually meter the grass on the top
I note that you have cropped 40%. Used 531 mm - Perhaps 600 mm may help - but on such long telephoto lenses there is a give in quality unfortunately especially on the long end
Keep shooting Peter. One of these days I hope to get out myself
Nice shot of this pair Peter, looking at the image at full size, the image quality suffers a little bit probably due to the combination of crop and fairly high iso for that camera body. I think you would have been better off in this situation to shoot it at 1/1250, F8, iso 500 or so. Without zooming in to full size the sharpness and IQ look pretty good.
Nice shot of this pair, Peter. I think you can fix most of the issues here in post processing. Some noise reduction would help a lot, particularly on the background, but even a little in the ducks themselves. The composition is quite nice.
Excellent point of view here. I like the setting. The water is quite pleasing. Aside from the image quality issues mentioned by others, I see a real nice shot and good skills with keeping both birds and focus.
Hi
Thanks for the comments. I will have to look into Topaz Sharpen AI and Clear. Would you use Topaz Sharpen AI first and then Clear? With the final photograph exported from Lightroom?
Peter
