Striking Head Shots I
by Ashley Vincent
Canon EOS 7D, EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM, Aperture Priority @ f/6.3 (1/60 sec), +1/3 EV, ISO 3200, Tripod, JPEG from RAW, Full Frame
Subject: Golden Pheasant
This is the first in another little mini-series I'd like to share with you.
First time I came across one of these birds at my local avery my jaw dropped a few inches and my immediate thought was, “Damn! Someone's done an amazing job of colouring that bird!!!”, which, if you're a believer in a Creator, or at least can appreciate Mother Nature's design, I guess is not too far off the mark ;^)
What with so many other subjects (both captive and wild) to photograph there, I've only made time on a few occasions to try and score good shots of this stunningly beautiful subject, but I will be making more time for it in the future.
Golden Pheasants are native to China, although at first glance my guess would have been Japan, going by the Samurai-styled headdress ;^)
Being that the avery has been designed to imitate the natural forest environment of all the birds in there, and these Pheasants are primarily ground dwellers, getting the optimum lighting on them is far from easy, and the one thing that often compounds this challenge is the high degree of reflection that jumps off the brightest parts of it's head feathers, which tends to happen with just the smallest amount of light falling on them.
Although I honestly can't remember the situation I was in when taking this shot, looking at my shooting data I'm amazed I managed to end up with the shot looking as good as this (at least to my eye!); f/2.8 would surely have been preferable to f/6.3, and -1/3 on the exposure compensation instead of +1/3 would likely have handled the highlights you see on parts of the crown better too. Nevertheless, I'm still pretty pleased with how this one turned out.
Critique and comments are always welcome :^)
Comments
12 commentsWonderful colours - looks like a Pharoah's headdress.
Maybe a little soft in the brighter areas, but who cares with colours like this!
Sandy
Keith.
Beautiful portrait of a bird I'd love to see in the wild one day. I'm curious as to why you think F2.8 would have been a better choice of aperture? At this close range if you had shot it wide open at 2.8 my guess is that only the eye and beak would be in sharp focus, certainly not the whole head dress. With close up portraits like this I will generally stop down between 1 and 2 stops. I agree with you regarding the minus compensation. I guess 2.8 would have let you shoot this at quite a bit lower iso with the same shutter speed. Speaking of iso this looks fantastic for 3200 with this camera body. Can I ask how you handled the noise in post processing?
Ray
Nate: Come to think of it, you're probably right. I guess when I wrote that about the f-stop I was thinking more in terms of f/2.8 would have likely blurred the background more not thinking that it might have made for a much more shallow DOF. Good point and something for me to bear in mind next time I find myself at relatively close quarters :^)
Angela: Back when I took this one I'm pretty sure I'd set the ISO on Auto, due to the mostly low light I was working in not giving me a fast enough shutter speed when I needed it, and the 7D in my experience set on Auto ISO tends to jump quite quickly up to 3200. I worked NR on the background but fortunately this was one image where the high ISO didn't seem noticeable in the subject at all. Before I print another copy of this one I'll follow your advice and draw back a little on the red channel, thanks for the tip :^)