Help required.

[Daisy M]

Unfortunately we have a flock of Goosanders on the angling club loch that I thought I would photograph before frightening them off. As you can see from todays attempt, not only is it a bit soft the feathers in the white part of the bird is blown. Can I have some advice on settings to enable the dark top of the bird to stay sharp as well as the detail in the white feathers.

• ƒ/7.1
• 600.0 mm
• 1/200
• 1250

Male Goosander. by David Miller, on Flickr

[Daisy M]

Had no help so bumping it back up the list. Dave

[lunarbo]

Hi Dave,

I am presuming you shot this without a tripod.

With a 600 lens the theory is the shutter speed should at least equal it- ie 1/640 for the image to be sharp. If your lens has IS you can get away with 1 stop down which would be 1/500
The effect of shooting at 1/200 is that the bird can move more in that time slot so he is softer in the image.

But in order to get enough light in the image at the shorter time slot (1/640) you will need to increase the ISO by at least 1 stop to 1600 or 2500

Your f 7.1 is fine. However if your lens opens more to say f 6.3 you may not need to increase the ISO, so shoot as open as it allows

You have a lot of dark background and a bird that is nearly 50% dark. If you shoot in evaluative metering ( as many of us do 99% of the time) your camera is trying to make an average of what’s in front of it. If you dial in a bit of Exposure Compensation ( say -1) the overall image will be brighter

But first I suggest you have a go at with the SS & f stop as above and see what you need to do with the ISO to get a histogram on site that shows fairly centrally.
Check this with both mainly dark and then mainly light backgrounds so you are familiar with what you need to do with your particular Canon/?Sigma combo. Obviously you want to keep the ISO as low as possible to keep the noise down, this is the balancing act that we all have to deal with

I know you are not a LR/PS guy, those of that do indulge have more wriggle room but that shouldn't take away from getting it right in camera

I should add that I do think this was a challenging image to get right when you want both light and dark detail at a distance away

However these are the basics that I think should be looked at first, the birdie guys should be on soon to add to this with talk about eyes and feathers

[Trev B]

David I missed this. Fully agree with Bo’s comment above, it not an easy subject at the best of times - why do birds have to be a dark colour and white, no consideration for the photographer

[Skyelines]

By the look of the light on the head and bill it seems the light source is beyond the bird so the head is in shadow, that is always going to be hard to deal with.

[Daisy M]

Thanks Bo, an area I shall have to practice, will have to write all that down as with this old memory I will forget it all. Thanks as well to Trev & Skye.