High Contrast, Dark Background

[CatherineA]

I am new to photography, new to CIC, and new to forums, so apologies in advance if this is a foolish question and the wrong spot for me to post. I have read the tutorials Understanding Camera Histograms and Camera Metering but I still wonder what the best approach would be to try and get a better shot of the following duck. They will be here in Ottawa for a couple more weeks so I should have the chance to do better. The grey water, the black and the white on the duck - I am not sure of the approach to take. I have a Nikon P900 so I don't have as many possibilities as I would with a DSLR but I know better shots are possible. Thank you

[Manfred M]

Catherine - I've moved your image and question to the "Nature & Architecture" forum. You are more likely to get comments and suggestions here.

While I am looking at your image; yes, the shot is definitely a bit underexposed, but getting the exposure right is a bit tricky, given the colouration of the duck. The light area is all to easy to "blow out"; i.e. locally overexpose it when brightening up the rest of the image.

You might also try to hold your camera level when shooting as this tends to give you a stronger image. The shot is not 100% sharp so this could be a focus or camera movement issue.

Finally, when shooting something that is moving, it is usually best to leave a more space in front of your subject to optically give it some space to move in to.

All of these things will come with practice, once you understand what you are doing right and doing wrong.

[Wavelength]

Hi catherine; it is a fairly good image; it would be better the duck is more into the frame than leaving out of the frame, i suppose; For the next week wish you happy duck-ing

[CatherineA]

thank you for your replies!

[Ziggy]

You might play around with AE lock.

[CatherineA]

Thanks, I will try that. Not sure that works as well on my camera as on others, but the problem could very well be with me...

[davidedric]

Hi Catherine, I was wondering where your post had gone!

This is a tricky subject because of the "high dynamic range", in other words you have both bright and dark tones, and both are important.

I think this would be very difficult to expose correctly from your camera ( any camera!) alone, and it will look its best after some work in your computer.

Do you have any software to work with? (Either what came with your camera, or something else)?

Dave

[CatherineA]

Hi David, thanks for the reply. I have a free something or other that came with Windows but I can’t do much with it. In fact I can’t see my histogram with it. I am thinking of buying a subscription to photoshop and Lightroom - seems to be the same price to have both. If I get that, then I take it that my best chance to get as much detail as possible is to experiment with underexposing. Is that correct?

[davidedric]

Hi again,

I dont think you can do much with whatever comes with Windows, though there may have been something which came with you camera.

As to the "best" program to buy, there are as many opinions as there are programs!

But, for what it's worth, I am a subscriber to Lightroom/Photoshop (and it is the same price for both), and that works for me. It will certainly give you all the editing and adjustments you need.

A note of caution, Adobe has recently muddied the waters with their products, so check back before deciding which to buy.

As for exposure, yes, the idea is to avoid "blowing" highlights, so under exposing and recovering later in your computer can be the way to go, but I'm afraid it can get a bit complicated! On the other hand, your picture of the duck (and I'm afraid I've forgotten its name) is pretty darn good!

Dave

Hi David, thanks for the reply. I have a free something or other that came with Windows but I can’t do much with it. In fact I can’t see my histogram with it. I am thinking of buying a subscription to photoshop and Lightroom - seems to be the same price to have both. If I get that, then I take it that my best chance to get as much detail as possible is to experiment with underexposing. Is that correct?

[lovelife65]

Hi Catherine, that is a fantastic duck. Tough subject and lighting, I am not sure what else to add that others with far more experience have already added

[CatherineA]

thank you Sharon!

[CatherineA]

(sorry if I am not replying to the posts in the right way, maybe I'm cluttering the thread) I will check what came with my camera. Thanks for the tip, David, that there might be software there. I do struggle with tech things.. there was cause to celebrate the day that I set my date and location. I'm highly motivated though becasue sure would like a photo as good as the ones that are in my mind's eye.

[dem]

Hi Catherine. Your image comes from a 5.6-crop camera shot at 2000 mm ff eq, 1/500s, f/6.5, ISO 1600. The fact that taking such an image is even possible nowadays is simply amazing. There are a few things that you can improve without changing the equipment you have got:

* think of the composition. Is the bird placed nicely in the frame (not too close to the edge or the centre), does the background look good, do you want to include more of the surrounding, do you want to exclude something, is there a shadow or reflection to think about etc...?

* get closer to your subject. If you can photograph these birds from 4-5 meters away rather than 20-30 meters, you will see a big difference in sharpness.

* get more light. With the sun close to horizon behind you, slightly to the side you will get "happier" looking shots with much more detail. Mainly because you will be able to drop ISO to the 100-200 mark. ISO 1600 is far too high for this sensor size and you lose lots of detail when noise reduction and sharpening is applied in camera when the JPEG image is produced. If there is an option on your camera to reduce noise reduction and increase sharpening, it is worth investigating. Shooting raw and adjusting noise and sharpness later on the computer is another option that requires more time and learning and might not be practical at the moment.

* The exposure in your image is about right - the whites are almost white. Ideally you would want to let a little bit more light in but not too much so that the whites are overexposed beyond repair. Since it is often difficult to get the exposure right on the day, some people use exposure bracketing - the camera automatically takes say 3 shots with 2/3 stops difference in exposure between them. Then you just use the best one. Whatever you do, take as many shots as you can. You can always delete 99% of them.

[CatherineA]

Hi Dem, Thank you very much for your suggestions. I learned a lot today by following through on them. I put Noise Reduction to low, and went into Picture Control and picked “vivid” instead of standard and then changed the settings for contrast, sharpening and saturation. I’ve never touched those settings before but I really liked the results so I’m intimidated by them anymore. Not much I could do about the ducks being extra active today and working with the gorilla pod was frustrating but I’m still happy with what I got today.

I also read about what a “5.6 crop camera” means and it adds to my understanding of cameras....Could you please tell me how you knew this and the other details of my shot? I don’t see it anywhere on my photo or when I put my mouse over it. Once I delete a photo from my memory card I don’t have a record of many details. Perhaps if I buy photoshop then i will see the data that at the moment is only on my memory card.

Thanks! I appreciate this.

[dem]

Glad to hear you are making progress!

Each image has some text metadata embedded in it, also known as EXIF data. You can view most of it in Windows Explorer simply by right-clicking on the file name and selecting "Properties".

For online images I use an online EXIF viewer:

http://metapicz.com/#landing?imgsrc=...com/1e41tw.jpg

There are plenty of others, some of them can be included as an add-on to a web browser. To check EXIF of your image I right-clicked on it in Chrome and selected "metapicz Exif viewer" from the menu.

Most software that deals with images will show you EXIF data and will allow you to remove it.

This includes a free "FastStone Image Viewer" which someone recommended on this forum for sorting and culling images:

http://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDetail.htm

I can pass this recommendation on.

[CatherineA]

Thanks for this too Dem. it’s really helpful.