Lesser Scaup Drake

Gallery: AvianPosted December 20, 201382 views8 comments

Another shot with the Canon 200-400 lens. The light levels were pretty low, so I bumped the ISO up to 160. Should have gone with a higher ISO to gain more shutter speed. I just dread the noise, although the 5D is much better in that regard than my 7D. A shutter speed of 1/80 s is pretty slow with this lens, but it was on a solid tripod. However, the subject was moving a little bit.

Fairly substantial crop. Image processed with CS3 and LightZone.

Comments and Critiques of the image and camera/lens combination welcome.

Canon 5D Mark II
Canon 200-400 f4 IS
f5.6
1/80 s
ISO 160
Exp Comp -1.33
Focal Length 560mm
Teleconverter Engaged

Comments

8 comments

Comment posted by John Jeevaratnam on December 21, 2013 at 2:08 AM

Beautiful capture of the Scaup. If anything I would have lowered the shadows and sharpened certain areas.

Registered on July 29, 2013, 112 Posts, 229 Comments

Comment posted by Rick Turner on December 21, 2013 at 11:23 AM

Excellent color rendition on head area.

these guys and gals arrived in Dallas a few weeks ago.

Registered on February 18, 2012, 534 Posts, 2755 Comments

Comment posted by Dennis Plank on December 21, 2013 at 12:22 PM

Very nice, Jerry. Excellent detail and exposure. The user reviews I've read of this lens are very good thus far, but it's way outside of my price range. I don't have any experience with the 5Dii, but judging by others posts, you can push the iso considerably higher. Even with the 7D, I don't hesitate to shoot at 500, though I do apply noise reduction. I use Neat Image and I find that I can actually apply it to the entire image without losing significant detail in the subject in most cases. Usually, it can find an area of the image to pull the noise information from, but there are also camera profiles available for it and they tell you how to make one for your own camera.

Registered on January 28, 2008, 1767 Posts, 23192 Comments

Comment posted by Jerry Austin on December 21, 2013 at 12:49 PM

Dennis,

Thanks for the post. It was helpful. I have found that my 7D, even at an ISO as low as 500, has considerable noise. This is the one aspect of the 7D that I have been disappointed in. In all other areas, I love the7D.

Registered on January 6, 2012, 651 Posts, 3448 Comments

Comment posted by John Robinson on December 21, 2013 at 7:10 PM

Looks good to me.
Dennis is spot on regards neat image. I tried some big stuff as a test some time ago and its amazing how you can do the whole image and it does seem to miss the main subject !-amazing ! I am in the process of doing my own profiles again. I did it some time back but found the auto method was better.
Cheers
JR

Registered on March 2, 2008, 535 Posts, 2453 Comments

Comment posted by Matthew Studebaker on December 21, 2013 at 8:41 PM

I love the purple showing on the head - standing in an otherwise monochrome scene. Nice traditional shot.

Registered on December 21, 2013, 11 Posts, 82 Comments

Comment posted by Craig Strand on December 22, 2013 at 6:24 AM

Beautiful work capturing the subtle coloring and details of this diver.

Registered on March 30, 2008, 416 Posts, 2885 Comments

Comment posted by Jerry Austin on December 22, 2013 at 9:07 AM

Everyone,

Thanks for commenting.

Dennis/John,

Thanks for the advice on Neat Image. I downloaded it as a plug in for my Photoshop CS3. It works great. Now I have lots of work ahead of me re-processing quite a few of old images. (smile)

Registered on January 6, 2012, 651 Posts, 3448 Comments