Swans are tough. C&C welcomed!

[epmi314]

Tough to properly expose a swan against its background. Let me know how I did...

[arith]

I use spot metering and overexpose on the swan by 1+2/3 stops, but I suppose 1.5 stops would be ok. Detail in feathers is hard to get.

[Geoff F]

Well I usually go the other way to Steve. After spot metering I under expose slightly (say 1/3 to 2/3 of a stop) which produces a rather grey swan. Then gradually recover the lost brightness with careful editing; often with an adjustment layer and mask.

I find that while adding a little positive exposure produces a pure white bird straight from the camera I tend to lose feather detail this way.

But as you said, Scott, swans (and any other white birds) are very difficult to expose correctly. With this shot the swan appears to be fractionally over exposed while the water is slightly on the dark blue side.

I find that very slightly reducing the blue channel shadows can help to reduce excessive blueness. But beware of going too far which will affect the whites.