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Bird in flight
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Up and Dunluce Castle this weekend, I took a minute to stop shooting the castle (or my friend climbing around on the hills around it) to grab a shot of this bird that was flying around the cliffs. Not very sharp, but not too shabby for a 300mm handheld shot.
Oh, and since I don’t really feel like starting another new thread for another bird shot so soon, I also caught this guy when he landed on the rail about 20 feet away:
Sharpness wise, for handheld 300mm you did really well. But all the detail has been blown out on the bird and in reality it’s just too small in the frame to be an effective shot.
The second shot, whilst not as difficult to capture is better in the sense that the bird is larger in the frame, well exposed and sharp. Compositionally you also used a diagonal, placing the bird on a third which is never a bad thing, But shooting from eyelevel (or perhaps bent down slightly), looking down at the bird has given this a more snapshot feel. If you could have gotten down to eye level with the bord, filled the frame even more and then took the shot, I think it would have made for a more effective photograph.
Trick with exposure and shooting seabirds who are usually white (which is the problem) is to shoot in manual mode (I assuming you didnt?).
The auto-exposure has exposed for the background which is darker therefore over-exposing the bird.You need to go into manual, set an appropriate shutter speed, find a mid-tone (grass or an 18% card), adjust aperture (or shutter ? whichever way you want to do it )
and try a shot. Look at the histogram first to see if there are too much in the way of highlights, look at the image secondly (never first ;) )
and adjust the exposure accordingly. You might find that the camera over-exposed by a 1/2 or 2/3 a stop by the way.All a bit of trial and error.
Both nice and sharp too, handholding at 300mm isn’t easy :)
Mark
Not sure about the first shot. At that distance it probably would have been virtually impossible to see any details in the white of the bird anyway. Did you shoot RAW? There’s alot going on in the background and as a result the bird doesnt really have much impact on the viewer.
The second shot i would love to see portrait. Just cropped after the birds shadow and you’ll still have the birdie on the diagonal and it will eliminate the little piece of grass that’s just a wee bit distracting. I usually like negative space, but in this instance everything to the right it outside the depth of field. I like the second shot but subconsciously i keep cropping it when i look at it if that makes sense :)
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