November Chickadees

[finnbay]

Took my 40D into the blind for half an hour in the middle of the day. Still primarily chickadees around, but good practice. Had a 300 2.8 on and used Av priority at 2.8. ISO 400.

Had enough sun that it looks like I blew some of the highlights out - will have to compensate a little next time.

[buzzsaw]

#1 and #3 are good comps, and if you shot in RAW and use CS3 you can slide the recovery bar over and get those details in the whites back. They aren't too bad however IMO.

[jonny_redhorse]

Nice Ken!...something about those chickadee shots for sure!...my favorite is the second image!.....just picked up a 100# of black oil seed...maybe get a few images this thanksgiving 4 day weekend!

[Jim Almquist]

Very nice shots Ken. My favs are 1 & 3. Excellent detail.

[MN Shutterbug]

I like the first one bestest. It appears that the chickadee has suet stuck to his tongue. Great timing.

[Dbl]

Nicely done Ken, I really enjoyed these.

[Steve Foss]

No. 1 and 3 for me too, Ken. Those are sweet comps, with of course No. 1 being tops IMO because of that bill/tongue/food. Nice taut pose and drama in No. 3, however. Nice work.

I've taken strongly lit Chickadee shots shot in RAW mode and used the blending technique listed here to good affect. Works nicely on high-contrast birds.

[finnbay]

Thanks everyone. I did try to use the recovery slider (thanks, Buzz) and blend (thanks, Steve) but have a tendency to not push the envelope far enough. Don't want to overplay the PP, but see I still need to refine technique.

[Steve Foss]

Ken, in the first and third images there are only a couple true hot spots within the whites on the cheek. When blending and opening the images that I expose for the whites, I'm not shy about dropping that exposure slider WAY down. I don't care about anything but the whites in that half of the process. Sometimes the rest of the image looks almost black if I've shot the image in strong light.

[finnbay]

That's what I need to hear. Sometimes when I drop that down, I'm afraid it will lower the rest of the exposure too much. Still feeling my way around the technique, and every suggestion helps! Thanks!

[Steve Foss]

Ken, it DOES take a bit of experimenting, but when you blend the two images, the one that focuses on the highlights has to get the highlights just right, and the mid-range and shadows in that image don't matter because they get thrown away in the blending process.

And, of course, blending the image isn't the final step, only an initial step, with as much pp to follow as you want. It's a lot easier to tweak a property blended image in pp than it is the original, because the exposure is more even once it's blended.

The other thing to remember is, once you have the image blended, to avoid using the "contrast" slider. It's a blunt tool in the best of circumstances that can easily blow out the very whites you've worked so hard to get right.