A Miraculous Color Temperature Save of the Sickly Yellow Original. And the ISO Answer. « Arthur Morris/BIRDS AS ART

A Miraculous Color Temperature Save of the Sickly Yellow Original. And the ISO Answer.

Stuff

We enjoyed a fine last morning on the Early Winter (it felt like it at times!) Fort DeSoto IPT. We had two minutes of sweet light on some sandbar White Pelicans, more chances to practice tern and gull blurs, and a nice flock of Laughing Gulls and Sandwich and Forster’s Terns. We did the flock wide with lots of different focal lengths and from different perspectives and different backgrounds. Then we approached carefully and finished off by isolating single birds on clean sand backgrounds.

Thanks a stack to Deidre Bryan, Narayanan Mangalath, and multiple IPT veteran Dietmar Haenchen for joining me. We had great fun, great food, and everyone learned a ton including and especially me.

I still need 3 or four folks for the Galapagos trip. If you would like to explore the possibilities, give me a call on my cell on Wednesday or Thursday at 863-221-2372.

This Just In!

There is an amazing new listing on the Used Gear Page here. I will run it in tomorrow’s post if nobody sees and buys it before then …

Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS II USM Lens/with Extras!

BAA Record-low Price

BAA IPTs

  • The 2018 Fort DeSoto Early Winter IPT/Thursday December 7 through the morning session on Monday December 10, 2018: 3 1/2 DAYS: $1549. Limit 8/Openings: 5.
  • Falklands Land-based IPT DEC 22, 2018 thru JAN 5, 2019/Two Weeks: Sold out.
  • 2019 San Diego 4 1/2-DAY BIRDS AS ART Instructional Photo-Tour (IPT) SUN JAN 20, 2019 thru and including the morning session on THURS JAN 24: 4 1/2 days: $2099. (Limit: 10/Openings: 4) Introductory Meet and Greet at 7:00pm on the evening before the IPT begins: THURS, 6 DEC.
  • The 2019 Hooptie Deux/Roseate Spoonbill Boat 3 1/2 DAY IPT — FEB 16 thru 19, 2019: $2599.00. Limit: 5 photographers/Openings: 2.
  • The New, Expanded 2019 UK Puffins, Gannets, & Red Kites IPT. Thursday June 27 (from EDI) through Tuesday, July 9, 2019 (on the ground; fly home on Wednesday July 10.): $9,999. Limit 10 photographers — needs four to run. Co-leader: Peter Kes.
  • The GALAPAGOS Photo Cruise of a Lifetime IPT/The Complete Galapagos Photographic Experience. July 23 to August 6, 2019 on the boat. 13 FULL and two half-days of photography: $14,499. Limit: 12 photographers/Openings: 4.


BIRDS AS ART

BIRDS AS ART is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

The iPhone Photography e-Guide

If you missed the long-awaited announcement yesterday, click here to learn about Cliff Oliver’s great new iPhone e-Guide. To order your copy of the The iPhone Photography e-Guide, please click here. The PDF is sent link by e-mail for downloading: the file is relatively huge at 216 MB.

Selling Your Used Photo Gear Through BIRDS AS ART

Selling your used (or like-new) photo gear through the BAA Blog is a great idea. We charge only a 5% commission. One of the more popular used gear for sale sites charged a minimum of 20%. Plus assorted fees! Yikes. They went out of business. And e-Bay fees are now up to 13%. The minimum item price here is $500 (or less for a $25 fee). If you are interested please scroll down here or shoot us an e-mail with the words Items for Sale Info Request cut and pasted into the Subject line :). Stuff that is priced fairly — I offer pricing advice to those who agree to the terms — usually sells in no time flat. Over the past year, we have sold many dozens of items. Do know that prices on some items like the EOS-1D Mark IV, the old Canon 100-400, the old 500mm, the EOS-7D and 7D Mark II and the original 400mm DO lens have been dropping steadily. You can always see the current listings by clicking here or on the Used Photo Gear tab on the orange-yellow menu bar near the top of each blog post page.

Money Saving Reminder

If you need a hot photo item that is out of stock at B&H, would enjoy free overnight shipping, and would like a $50 discount on your first purchase, click here to order and enter the coupon code BIRDSASART at checkout. If you are looking to strike a deal on Canon or Nikon gear (including the big telephotos) or on a multiple item order, contact Steve Elkins via e-mail or on his cell at (479) 381-2592 (Eastern time) and be sure to mention your BIRDSASART coupon code and use it for your online order. Steve currently has several D850s in stock along with a Nikon 600mm f/4 VR. He is taking pre-orders for the new Nikon 500 P and the Nikon Z6 mirrorless camera body.

Gear Questions and Advice

Too many folks attending BAA IPTs and dozens of photographers whom I see in the field and on BPN, are–out of ignorance–using the wrong gear especially when it comes to tripods and more especially, tripod heads… Please know that I am always glad to answer your gear questions via e-mail. Those questions might deal with systems, camera bodies, accessories, and/or lens choices and decisions.


The 2018 B&H/BAA Bird Photography Holiday Contest!

Thanks to the generosity of the great folks at B&H, I am proud to announce the first-ever B&H/BAA Bird Photography Holiday Contest. The rules are simple:

1-Anyone can enter one or two of their favorite avian images that were created in 2018. As below, each image must be sent in a separate e-mail.
2-Image clean-up and repair is permitted.
3-Send you JPEGs in two separate e-mails only by clicking on this link: Contest Entry e-mail.
4-Please size your properly sharpened JPEGs as follows: 1200 high or wide less than 600 kb.
5-If you do not follow the instructions above to the letter your images will not be judged and you will not receive any notification.
6-There is one judge and you can guess who it is.
7-Here are the five prizes:

1st place: a $100 B&H gift certificate
2nd through 4th place: a $50 B&H gift certificate

All prizes will be awarded.

8- Entries my be submitted from now until January 16, 2019. Happy New Year! Please remember to do your holiday shopping at B&H using a BAA affiliate link or by clicking here or on the banner just below.

Good luck.

This image was created with on the morning of Day 3 of the Early Winter DeSoto IPT with the hand held Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 500mm f/5.6E PF ED VR lens and the rugged, blazingly fast Nikon D5 with Dual XQD Slots.AUTO ISO at ? Matrix metering plus 2 1/3 stops: 1/500 sec. at f/5.6 in S Mode (Shutter Priority — Tv mode in Canon). Auto 1 WB at 10:11am on a cloudy/very dark rainy morning.

Center Group (grp) AF/Shutter button AF as framed was active at the moment of exposure. The array was centered squarely on the bird’s face with the lower AF point on its neck. I kept my 500 PF/D5 on my shoulder via an RS-7 Curve Breathe Strap. Click on the image to see a larger version.

Focus peaking AF Fine-tune: -1. See the Nikon AF Fine-tune e-Guide here.

Incoming Great Blue Heron

What’s the ISO?

In the What’s the ISO blog post here I wrote:

After reading the account above and considering both the enlarged full frame image and the tight crop above, please leave a comment and take a guess at the ISO that the camera set for today’s featured image. (Click on the link to see the tightly cropped image.)

The educated guesses ran from ISO 1,600 to ISO 10,000. ISO 10,000 is the correct answer. I think that the D5 handled the very high ISO quite nicely. It is not often that folks think that ISO 10,000 images were created at ISO 1,600.

This was created on the Early Winter DeSoto IPT with the hand held Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6G ED VR lens at 400mm and the rugged, blazingly fast Nikon D5 with Dual XQD Slots.AUTO ISO at 640. Matrix metering plus 2 stops: 1/25 sec. at f/5.6 in S Mode(Shutter Priority — Tv mode in Canon). Auto 1 WB at 7:03am on a cloudy/very dark morning. See more below on the sickly yellow light …

One below the center Group (grp) AF/Shutter button AF as originally framed was active at the moment of exposure. I kept the array on the flock and it held focus nicely. I had the 80-400 on my shoulder via an RS-7 Curve Breathe Strap. Click on the image to see a larger version.

Focus peaking AF Fine-tune: +4. See the Nikon AF Fine-tune e-Guide here.

Shorebird Pastel flock blur sickly yellow original

The Sickly Yellow Original …

As the sun rose behind some heavy cloud cover on Sunday morning the light became a sickly yellow (above) that often indicates that a big storm is coming. It came but we had fun anyway photographing tame birds with the wind and the stinging cold rain at our backs. You can get an idea of the color of the light in the JPEG above that accurately represents the original capture. AUTO 1 ISO had set the color temperature at 3150 Kelvin. I thought that the image had potential …

This image was created on the morning of Day 3 of the Early Winter DeSoto IPT with the hand held Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6G ED VR lens at 400mm and the rugged, blazingly fast Nikon D5 with Dual XQD Slots.AUTO ISO at 640. Matrix metering plus 2 stops: 1/25 sec. at f/5.6 in S Mode(Shutter Priority — Tv mode in Canon). Auto 1 WB at 7:03am on a cloudy/very dark morning.

One below the center Group (grp) AF/Shutter button AF as originally framed was active at the moment of exposure. I kept the array on the flock and it held focus nicely. I had the 80-400 on my shoulder via an RS-7 Curve Breathe Strap. Click on the image to see a larger version.

Focus peaking AF Fine-tune: +4. See the Nikon AF Fine-tune e-Guide here.

Image A: Shorebird Pastel flock blur pano

Miraculous Color Temperature Save

I worked this image with the group during a Photoshop session. The main component of success was simply lowering the color temperature from 3150 K to 2500 K. That move brought lots of oohs an ahs. I adjusted the additional sliders to taste and brought the TIFF into Photoshop. There I cropped to a pano, applied a 30% layer of Image > Auto Contrast (as taught to me by Denise Ippolito), and used the Patch Tool to eliminate two birds. All of the above plus tons more in Digital Basics II.

Image A above was the first version that I created. I lost the optimized file 🙁 but did save the JPEG. When I re-did the image from scratch, I created the different version below.

The Lesson

It is amazing how much information there is in a properly exposed RAW file …

This, a second version of the image above, was (of course) created on the morning of Day 3 of the Early Winter DeSoto IPT with the hand held Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6G ED VR lens at 400mm and the rugged, blazingly fast Nikon D5 with Dual XQD Slots.AUTO ISO at 640. Matrix metering plus 2 stops: 1/25 sec. at f/5.6 in S Mode(Shutter Priority — Tv mode in Canon). Auto 1 WB at 7:03am on a cloudy/very dark morning.

One below the center Group (grp) AF/Shutter button AF as originally framed was active at the moment of exposure. I kept the array on the flock and it held focus nicely. I had the 80-400 on my shoulder via an RS-7 Curve Breathe Strap. Click on the image to see a larger version.

Focus peaking AF Fine-tune: +4. See the Nikon AF Fine-tune e-Guide here.

Image B: Shorebird Pastel flock blur taller pano

The Taller Pano

Please leave a comment and let us know which of today’s two featured images you prefer, Image A, the pano version, or Image B, the taller pano. Do you see any differences besides the crop? IAC, please let us know why you made your choice.


guide-to-pleasing-blurs

Learn the secrets of creating contest winning images in our “A Guide to Pleasing Blurs.”

A Guide to Pleasing Blurs

In our A Guide to Pleasing Blurs by Denise Ippolito and yours truly, we discuss just about every technique ever used mankind to create pleasingly blurred image. Ninety-nine point nine percent of pleasing blurs are not happy accidents. You can learn pretty much everything that there is to know about creating them in this instructive, well written, easy to follow guide.

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To show your appreciation for my continuing efforts here, we ask, as always, that you get in the habit of using my B&H affiliate links on the right side of the blog for all of your photo and electronics purchases. Please check the availability of all photographic accessories in the New BIRDS AS ART Online Store, especially the Mongoose M3.6 tripod head, Wimberley lens plates, Delkin flash cards and accessories, and LensCoat stuff.

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Typos

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7 comments to A Miraculous Color Temperature Save of the Sickly Yellow Original. And the ISO Answer.

  • avatar Vince

    I liked the taller pano, because of the foreground that adds balance.

  • avatar Ed Dow

    That’s a tough one. The second brings in beautiful water and that is where my eye is drawn. But the birds appear more static. And I like the symmetry of the birds over the sandbar surrounded by water on both sides. In the first image the birds convey more a sense of motion and are undoubtedly the focal point of the photo.

    I guess if I had to pick one to hang on my wall, it would be the second (tall pano).

  • avatar Patrick Sparkman

    I like version B the best. Even though the birds are roughly right down the middle, the variation in tones in the background balance it out nicely. I love that green water on the bottom! That, and the second larger bird on the right with cool looking black one above it are my favorite parts of the image. Very pleasing blur!

  • avatar Neil Hickman

    Hi!
    Lovely layers, and the bottom two in the larger image are the lovliest! Birds are super in both.
    Cheers!
    Neil

  • Hi Artie,
    both versions are very nice. I like the taller pano better because
    1: it gives a better sense of the location with the water in the foreground.
    2: I like the symmetry of the greenish sea, even though it puts the birds into the center of the image. This works very well for me.

    Regards,

    Dietmar

    • avatar Arthur Morris/BIRDS AS ART

      Thanks Dietmar, It was great seeing and working with again you on the recent IPT. I still have not heard from Michael Tapes … I will let you know when I do.

      artie