Foggy Morning Ducks and Geese

[john michael white]

Went back out this past Saturday morning to shoot the ducks and geese again.  Got up early, as the morning was cold and foggy, but the fog was supposed to burn off early, which I envisioned giving me incredible light.  It didn’t exactly work out that way…was supposed to burn off around 8 am but didn’t happen till almost 11 am.  So was out early, in very low light and thick fog with the new lens and new 1.4 TC.  

Came up with these images that I like.  Not sure if they appear a little soft on some or if they work – kind of have a creamy feel which works for me with the mood, but others may not like?  Shutter speeds were faster than my zoom setting, so may have been the fog that was taking off some sharpness?  The next day, I shot some images with the 1.4 TC in good sunlight, and the images appeared to be very sharp.  

This brings up a question:  The rule that you need a minimum shutter speed equal to your zoom length to handhold shots does that also need to take into account the crop factor of the camera?  For example, if I am shooting at 200mm with a 1.4 TC, I am really shooting at 280mm, but if you figure in the crop factor of the camera (1.6), I am at 448mm.  Should my minimum shutter speed  be above 1/300th or 1/450th in order to handhold?  It seams it needs to be up around 1/450th or above.

Anyway, here are the new images I came up with.  Do they work? Do you like any better than others?  You can see larger versions on my website here http://www.johnmwhitephotography.com/p911377669

[John Bennett]

John.

A good number of the images are a bit “soft” (by my standards). Badly, no not by a long shot. Why that is could be a few things. I dont see any signs of over sharpening though, so there is likely room for some more agressive sharpening and could be nothing more than needing some more or different sharpening technique.

Some of the images detail is lacking given how much of the frame they fill. This could be a result of the additon of the TC (TCs do take hits on IQ), the light, being a bit soft (needed a little more sharpening) or being cropped. Are any cropped? Usually with longer lenses its fairly easy to tell when an image is cropped, as the DoF is too great for a shot that apparently fills alot of the frame. With a 200 (and TC) your going to have quite a bit more DoF so its hard to tell.

With regards to “crop factor” and avoiding shake.
When shooting birds start out by trying to be well above the RoT, say 1/1000th. Over time you will be able to drop that to a point where you can comfortably shoot below the threshold if need be.
You not shooting at 450mm. Your shooting at 280mm. The FoV is equivalent to that of shooting with a 450mm lens, the “reach” or magnification if you will is not 1.6 times more. Also keep in mind motion blur, birds are rarely *still*. The longer your focal length, the more SS you need to eliminate motion blur. Basically the closer to you a subject is, the harder it is to capture it when its in motion, b) the more SS you need to *freeze* it all else being equal.

Note that the flowers are not “closer”, nor is there any more detail. What different is the FoV, or worded another way. The smaller your sensor, the more of the image is “trimmed” away (not cropped as in magnified)
http://digital-photography-school.com/crop-factor-explained

On “wildlife/Birding”
Try to avoid ass end shots, or shots where the subject is moving away, or positioned such that its facing away.
Try to get images with catchlight
Always aim for the eye
Position your subject so that it leads viewers into the frame, rather than out.

[john michael white]

Also keep in mind motion blur, birds are rarely *still*. The longer your focal length, the more SS you need to eliminate motion blur. Basically the closer to you a subject is, the harder it is to capture it when its in motion, b) the more SS you need to *freeze* it all else being equal.

I think you hit the nail on the head above – in retrospect, this is something that I was wondering/suspecting the more I thought about things.  Shutter speeds may have been fine to handhold on a stationary subject, but these ducks were swimming around pretty fast.  These images had shutter speeds from 1/225 to 1/400.  f4, ISO 160 to 250.  Do you think a monopod would have made the difference at these speeds?  Maybe not because the ducks would still be soft due to *their* motion from swimming.

Yes these images were cropped slightly, but I try not to crop very much.  A few of them had to be rotated slightly to level the water a bit, and then I had to crop to relevel the image, so lost a little bit there on a couple.  I would say that the images that were cropped have a majority (80-90%) of the origional image.  I could possibly sharpen more – didn’t want to overdo it.

Thanks for the additional birding tips.

Thanks John – all really helpful info.

[John Bennett]

What body do you use?

Monopods are ok and have their place, but really the first thing you should do is bump your ISO. With a 40D+ you can shoot at iso 800 easily. 1/400th should be ok for avoiding shake with a 200 + tc but it might require a bit of practise. It should be ok for ducks swmming. 1/200th or so might be a hair low for shake and until your practised panning borderline there to. Only real way for you to find your threshold is to keep firing frames and compare. Next time out make getting your shutter speed up there a priority.

With wildlife and in particular birds SS is king. Find a speed that works for you, then set your ISO at what ever it takes to acheive that.

As a RoT my “general” SS is 1/1000th. I can shoot well below that even for birds in flight ive got plenty of good shots at 1/250th but when sizing things up I like to see my SS above 1/1000th and with fast flyers 1/2000th.

For comparative purposes look at the detail in this. click twice for full screen.
http://jben.zenfolio.com/p468487807/h196889ba#h196889ba

Light wasnt bad but in order to keep my SS above 1/100th I used ISO 640. Id bump that above iso 1000 if I had to. Thats what o want to see say in your first

[john michael white]

I’m using a 40D.  

I actually started out that morning shooting some frames at ISO 1000, but they just came back so grainy, and when I tried to do noise reduction, I just didn’t like it because I lost detail.  For me, it seems that with my camera, anything below ISO 400 is fine, but much above that it seems to get real grainy.  I say that with a caveat, in that in some situations, I have shot at ISO 1000 and the images cleaned up very well, but in real low light situations, it just seems to be too grainy.  I check all my work at 100%, and yes they do look a little soft for my tastes at that size.  I am using Picture Cooler for my noise reduction software.  

I should have kept some of the images I shot at ISO 1000 so I could show you and see what you thought.  I shot a weird looking duck that was on land and surrounded by vegetation at ISO 1000, and that image I think, would have cleaned up pretty well.  But the images of ducks on the water at a distance in this very grey monotone setting were incredibly grainy.  When I tried working with them, I didn’t like the result.  Seems to be hit or miss for me at ISO 1000, so I kind of default to trying to keep my [EDIT: ISO] as low as possible.  This was my mistake though in that I thought that the 1/250 – 1/400 SS was adequate, when really I should have been striving for a much higher SS as you suggested.

I could have bumped up the ISO to say 400 or 600, and maybe that would have given me a good compromise and the SS I needed….there was still room to bump up ISO to gain SS.  Good point.

Love those example pics you posted 🙂

[J A Y M O R R]

John,
I shot ont he 40D for quite some time.

[John Bennett]

John Jay made a great point. Shooting birds in bad light is a challenge, I only do it if Im bored to tears and want to practise. If you want to shot frames for practise in bad light again target seagulls. Shooting birds whith alot of whites can be good in bad light as your able to expose for the whites better.

No arguement that the 40D is best around ISO 400 but it can handle ISO 800 and if you must ( where  a picture is better than no picture iso 1000)

30D ISO 800

30D ISO 800

30D ISO 800

30D ISO 1000

John do me a favor.
Send me a file thats *almost* there. Meaning one you like but its a) a bit grainy and b) a little soft. just to make it easier emailing reduce it down in size some so its under 5mb.

Practise with software is just as important as practise with hardware

[john michael white]

Thanks guys.  Lots of good info.  I probably should have packed it up with the conditions, but I got myself up early, and thought I would shoot anyway and see what I came up with.  Hoped the light would come out while I was there but was denied.

John – I’ll try to send you an image tonight when I get home.  Thanks for being willing to take a look.  The best one would probably be the shot above of the goose that fills the frame.

Jay and John – Gorgeous pics y’all posted.

[J A Y M O R R]

BTW JB, beautiful pics!

[John Bennett]

Thanks Jay.

John there are alot of variables and alot to learn. God knows I expect to be learning/improving for the next 20 years. But alot of it comes down practise, experience, and knowing the limits of your gear.
-Pracise is practise,
-experience teaches you…ok, given these conditions or that subject, I should do A or change my settings to B
-Knowing your gear allows you make the changes on the fly and be right more than wrong, or understanding its limits. How much you can push iso for example, or maybe your asking too much of it, etc,etc.

Theres no reason *not* to shoot in bad light. Even if you delete every single image you can still learn things from them. The last 3 weeks I’ve been familiarsing myself with a new body, learning its quirks, etc. Ive been out every chance I have (typically sunrise to 10am, each Sat and Sun. In all Ive had maybe, maybe 45 minutes of decent light. The rest has been typical grey, over cast winter days. Shite light in other words. In all I thhnk Ive kept about 10 images. Lots of good shots but subject matter is crap (ive been shooting geese alot, simply because this time of years thats all I can find really) and unless the light is unusually sweet with geese, the shots are boring (to me anyways).

But after hrs of shooting mostly geese in crap light, I can make changes on the fly without taking my eye from the viewfinder. Ive got my custom functions set up (things like registered AF points that I can jump to with a single press of a button,  whether I want the AF to snap to things that cross in front of the subject or not, how fast/slow I want it to react with background distractions, etc,etc,etc.).

Dont let crap light *stop* you.
ISO 1600 1/500th

Experiment and have fun with it.

Re the goose or swan that fills the frame. That latters sharp, shows good detail in the whites. Send me something you might have deleted. You may still delete it, I just want to demonstrate (if its there) how some PP can turn images around.  Either with some localised contrast, more sharpening, noise removal etc. It will hopefully give you an idea of what can be done to save images that are a bit soft, or grainy, or ….and keep in mind Im no pro with PS, I still have way more to learn with PP.

[john michael white]

John – I’ll have to check when I get home, but I think I deleted most all of the images I didn’t like that were grainy.

The last couple of images you posted appear to me to have flash – is this correct?

[John Bennett]

1st image : No Flash
2nd image: Flashed

Can be useful for fill on bright days, but Im not a big fan.
Largely because with long lenses you need to use the Better Beamer which does work in extending your flash output, but is overkill when the subject is closer. Nor do I like adding the velco to the head and finally by the time I add the RRS flash bracket (you really need to get the flash off body and above the axis) and flash it adds considerable weight to an already heavy rig.

[Brett Colvin]

I probably should have packed it up with the conditions, but I got myself up early, and thought I would shoot anyway and see what I came up with.

Lots of great advice here and I don’t have much to add.

Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.

Some of the “lessons” I value the most have stemmed from a disappointing result.

[Douglas Barnes]

…

Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.

….

Awesome and well said!

Can I use that?

db

[john michael white]

Thanks Brett – well said.

John – I deleted all the grainy bad images, so don’t have anything to send you at this time.  I did go back and do a little more sharpening to see what I could get away with.  Here are the results:  I also added a picture not shown previously.

Not shown previously above:

Didn’t show this one either – kind of like it if I hadn’t of cut off the front goose’s butt:

Previously shown but sharpened a bit more:

[John Bennett]

They look a bit better John. Dont be afraid to aggressively sharpen your images, worst case scenario you post one here and ask if it looks over sharpened.. Depending on the images useage, you can get away with alot, turning soft and even slightly OOF images into keepers..

For images you find noisy, dont be afraid to run removal software. Again experiment. Being heavy handed will degrade your image, but you can reduce and remove noise, without being heavy handed. Maybe look at some different software….dunno..Noise Ninja, Neat Image, Noise aware all get good reviews.

[Brett Colvin]

Quote:

Affirmative DB!

JMW – looking forward to seeing your next round.

[john michael white]

Dont be afraid to aggressively sharpen your images, worst case scenario you post one here and ask if it looks over sharpened.. Depending on the images useage, you can get away with alot, turning soft and even slightly OOF images into keepers..

btw like the 2nd images.

Thanks John – guess I was too afraid of over sharpening ;D

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