Holding back the whites

[taxi]

I've noticed ona couble of the shots in the bird forum, with the coal tit that a few of the photographers have mangaed to capture both the whites on the side of the birds face and keep detail in black feathers. Can I ask how you are doing this?

Are you under exposing, if so how are you keeping the details in the blacks or is it post processing(how can I suggest such a think )?

 

[u8myufo]

Well Gerald personaly I always tend underexpose despite the rule of thumb saying keep it to the right :shrug: In saying that though there are times that I have gone over, so long as you are shooting RAW then you will be able to adjust to suit. Hope this is some help to you.

 

[Joe T]

Most of my bird shots are under-exposed by 1/3 to 2/3 to help retain the highlights. I then recover in PS.

 

[RKC]

All my shots are underexposed by normally 1 third which I find works for my kit, that I think is the main thing, take a few shots and see what works with your kit.

 

[taxi]

Well Gerald personaly I always tend underexpose despite the rule of thumb saying keep it to the right :shrug: In saying that though there are times that I have gone over, so long as you are shooting RAW then you will be able to adjust to suit. Hope this is some help to you.

Most of my bird shots are under-exposed by 1/3 to 2/3 to help retain the highlights. I then recover in PS.

All my shots are underexposed by normally 1 third which I find works for my kit, that I think is the main thing, take a few shots and see what works with your kit.

Thanks all for your replies. You all seem to be saying the same think, so it's time to give it a try.

Are you using evalutive metering or spot metering?

 

[Joe T]

For birds I usually use centre-weighted, this one: (.)

 

[DaiTheDragon]

Most Black and White birds are difficult to expose correctly. You don't normally have time to take a couple of shots and then check the exposure. Shooting in RAW is your best option. After some practice you will have a rough idea whether to under expose or not. I think under exposing is better than over.

Dai

 

[taxi]

For birds I usually use centre-weighted, this one: (.)

Thanks for the tip, how does this technique cope with the blacks/whites as you'll be forusing on the eyes and in the coal tit it's where the greatest contrast is?

Most Black and White birds are difficult to expose correctly. You don't normally have time to take a couple of shots and then check the exposure. Shooting in RAW is your best option. After some practice you will have a rough idea whether to under expose or not. I think under exposing is better than over.

Dai

Thanks Dai, I'll give that a go.

 

[u8myufo]

Thanks all for your replies. You all seem to be saying the same think, so it's time to give it a try.

Are you using evalutive metering or spot metering?

I will change my metering depending on how the light is falling Gerald. There are no hard and fast rules imo only guidelines.

 

[garry71]

I had a few overexposed bird shots today, shooting RAW.
I could bring the dark areas back down, but some highlights were still lost, even in RAW.

On this one, you can see it's lost around his mouth, and the top of his beak.


DSC_2243 by gvp1, on Flickr

 

[taxi]

I will change my metering depending on how the light is falling Gerald. There are no hard and fast rules imo only guidelines.

That make's it as clear as mud. lol

I'm guessed that would be the case.

I had a few overexposed bird shots today, shooting RAW.
I could bring the dark areas back down, but some highlights were still lost, even in RAW.

On this one, you can see it's lost around his mouth, and the top of his beak.


DSC_2243 by gvp1, on Flickr

I can see what you mean about the blown highlights on the top of the beak. It'll always be hard to hold that in but you do show the put falls of using raw. I say pit falls but it would be a wider range than you could recover in jpg.

 

[Werecow]

Unfortunately theres no setting to get the perfect exposure for every scene. For example if the sun is behind me and the background behind the bird is light toned, i quite often set +1 EC to compensate and still not blow the whites.
The difference in tone between the subject and the background and how your metering mode interprets it is the thing you need to get used to.

I usually work in AV mode while having manual mode set to keep the whites if an extreme situation arises.
I set the manual mode settings when i have a chance in the session, and usually start off around 1/1280 F5.6 (for iso 200). That way if the bird moves into a very dark background area and the sun comes out, i can switch to manual to safeguard the whites quickly without having to dial in -2 or more in EC.

 

[Roy C]

I am going to buck the trend on this one - I never knowingly underexpose but prefer to shoot to the right so that the highlights are just clipping. That way you minimise noise and maximise the dynamic range - its the old 80-20 rule where 80% of the tonal range is in the brightest 20% parts of the image, if you underexpose and push in processing you could be losing a lot of tonal range as well as increasing noise in the shadowed areas when you push it back in processing.
Having said that with black and white birds you will need to expose for the whites and then selectively bring up the blacks in processing.
With my 7D I am changing the Ev comp all the time to suit the situation but as a starting point for mid toned birds in a mid toned situation I use Ev+ 2/3.
As far as metering modes go my only recommendation would be to use one mode and learn how it performs in differing situations, that way you will know precisely how much Ev comp to dial-in for any given situation - this is very difficult to learn if you keep switching metering modes. For birds this should be Evaluative or partial IMO (That is Canon speak, not sure about Nikon), spot can occasionally be used in certain circumstances but using all the time can give some strange results.

At the end of the day the most important thing is to get the metering more or less right in the Camera and not rely on processing to correct it for you IMHO - as long as you acheive that the method you use it somewhat irrelevant, what ever works for you is the best for you.
I am convinced that accurate metering at the time of shooting is the most abused thing with bird photography because a lot of people think you can just press the shutter and worry about the exposure later on in processing. The number of noisy shots you see at lowish ISO's (400-1600) is a clear indication to me that the shots have been incorrectly exposed in the Camera and then pushed in processing - this is particularly true if cropping fairly heavily where any noise is amplified. With a Camera like the 7D you should be able to get virtually noise free images at ISO 1600 no problem if you expose correctly.

Anyway that's enough c##p from me for one day so over and out

 

[Canon Bob]

Are you using evalutive metering or spot metering?

It's worth trying to envisage the final scene if you're going to crop later (especially for smaller birds) as there's no point in compromising exposure for areas of the scene that you'll be discarding in PP....in other words, "crop" your metering region to match your final composition not the scene through the viewfinder.

Bob

 

[Werecow]

Same here Roy. I just meant that it sometimes takes minus EC to get to that point.
My goal if possible is to have a couple of twinkling individual pixels in the whites on the camera preview highlights warning. But not large blocks of flashing pixels.

Longs the highlights are in the right-hand end section of the histogram i'm pleased though.

Sometimes an exception to this is when there's a lot of red in a scene. If a single colour channel is blown (the reds seem more susceptible to this on Canons anyway) it can lose detail in a subject. In that situation i'll expose going by the histogram on RGB mode rather than brightness, which usually means underexposing more than i'm used to.

I am going to buck the trend on this one - I never knowingly underexpose but prefer to shoot to the right so that the highlights are just clipping. That way you minimise noise and maximise the dynamic range - its the old 80-20 rule where 80% of the tonal range is in the brightest 20% parts of the image, if you underexpose and push in processing you could be losing a lot of tonal range as well as increasing noise in the shadowed areas when you push it back in processing.