I want to learn one thing at the Merritt...

Zanotti

....Shoot out. How to quit blowing the highlights. I have read the posts and I just cant seem to make it happen.....



This is one ugly bird....



I can get close, but the highlights are blown:



Various flying things:









Some scary creatures followed me in the woods:



But I know I was safe, because its heavily patrolled:




All my exits were blocked:


You've got to look down, too:



Old pine forests are woodpecker heaven:





A fun day out at Honeymoon Island State Park.

Zanotti

PS: Starting to get excited about going to the Merritt Shootout. I really want to improve my shooting levels!

Dick on Aruba

Nice series Zanotti

Learn to read you histogram will help you out with the highlights.

Thanks for sharing.

Dick.

raptorcaptor

Also shoot raw, that will save you when your highlights are close!

Harryb

Check out this thread http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=26500 for some good info on saving those highlights.

I used to blow my highlights until I took Ron Reznick's session. I'm sure that after you do Ron's session you'll be nailing these exposures. I usually shoot in aperture priority and make EV adjustments. When shooting white birds in normal lighting you will usually need an EV adjustment of -0.3 at the very least.

jwear

all this is great advice --a session with Ron will give you things to work on for a long time --and no one stops blowing em out from time to tme

Zanotti

I am ready to go!. I do have to explore raw shooting a little more - as a beginner I have always stayed with jpeg.

Perhaps its time to move up a notch!

Z

pathfinder

Shooting white birds in tropical sunlight will be very difficult without shooting in RAW........

Osprey Whisperer

Along with the previous excellent advice....you might want to put your camera in shutter priority set to the appropriate speed you want to shoot the birds at (ie 1/1500) and take a meter reading off a large white wall of a building (or likes). Take note of the aperture setting the camera selects. Making sure the white wall is brightly lighted in full sun. If you take the reading and are shooting a few hours after sunrise and before a few hours from sunset..this reading should be pretty darn good. You can then shoot in manual and keep this setting that you previously metered. You may have to tweek it a bit. This is where that histogram comes into play. Great luxury over film cameras from the past.

Shooting RAW as mentioned gives you a pretty good range to play with exposure in photoshop. You can also work up two of the same images working one up for highlights...the other for shadows. Then merget them for a well exposed image.

pathfinder

Good idea re: shooting manual in bright sunlight that does not change, Mike.

But if you meter off a white building, I would suggest you dial in about +1.5 EC or so, or the white building will be grey in your images due to underexposure, since the meter is built to read off of neutral gray cards. This is especialy important, if you spot meter.

Essentially, this is the same thing as shooting in a snowy environment, where you need + EC as well to avoid inaccurate metering with the cameras reflected meter reading.