Great Blue Heron

Keta

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Feb 11, 2006
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Location
Vancouver, BC, Canada
Website
www.ketadesign.ca
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hello! This photo as taken on a cloudy day in low light . . . I like the 'action' feel of it and the windblown feathers.

heron2_2.jpg



I cropped the scan in closely, so the image may appear grainy (I do have a smaller size of the exact same thing here . . . http://ketadesign.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/heron1_2.jpg )

Apart from a slight adjustment to the levels in PhotoShop, this scan looks pretty much like the print.

Any comments on composition / subject / image quality is very appreciated! I have learned a lot from frank critique on here, so don't hold back. (well, maybe be a LITTLE gentle) :)

-Keta
 
I'm certainlly no expert in any sense but I'll try to offer my 2 cents.

too much noise going on, I don't know if you can correct that or not. Is this digital or film? If it's film and its that noisy you could touch it up in some editing programs.

I like the shot but I think it would have been better if you shot behind the subject with it looking (left) or back at you. But at least at this angle you are guarnteed to see its face.

I also think this shot would have been spectacular during sunset/dusk when the lights are a lot warmer.

Great shot nonetheless! I really respect animal photograpers because of how hard it can be to get the animal to co-operate :D
 
I wish you had gotten a little more of the water on the left and the top, and given the heron "somewhere to go." But I can imagine that it had to be a quick shot to capture him, and you maybe didn't have time to really line it up to truly get in your rule of thirds.

Lucky you, living in Vancouver! You have the perfect location to really get some amazing pictures of scenery and wildlife, and also great options for outdoor portrait shoots! I'm so jealous ;)
 
Well, it's not very glamourous standing out there up to your knees in freezing cold ocean trying to get these shots . .. then the stupid thing flies away just as you get close enough! (which is what happened this time, I was trying to circle around but buddy got skittish so I snapped what I could get)

I truly believe that living here in Van is a HUGE source of my inspiration. I'm not loaded up like a National Geographic professional or anything; my purpose is to show that there is wildlife in every city. We just need to open our eyes and see it.

I think I am over-compensating . . . I was told by many of you back in the summer to crop my photos in more closely. Now it appears I am doing it too much! If I can impose on you a little more .. . here is the full print.
Please give suggestions on where the cropping should be!

heronfix.jpg



And thanks again, everyone, for the tips and advice.
 
Ah the full print.

Looks fine to be honest, much better the the close up. I'd leave it alone personally, but you could crop a bit off the left. Maybe after the high rise on the left.
 
I does look pretty good, but one thought when you are using a zoom is not to let your shutter speed be lower than your lenses MM. Example, If you are using a 200mm lens at full zoom don't let your shutter speed be lower than 1/200. This helps avoid camera shake. A mono pod or tripod can help for lower speeds. But catching wildlife with a tripod might be hard, I have never tried it....
Cosmo
 
cosmonaut said:
Example, If you are using a 200mm lens at full zoom don't let your shutter speed be lower than 1/200. This helps avoid camera shake.

Ah, that is very helpful to know! Thank you. My lens is 75-300mm and I often use it at full zoom
I've suspected for a while that with more experience the 'rhythm' of the numbers will become second nature; they are just proportions of each other, or inverse ratios (exposure / aperature and such, I mean).
Kind of like music! That's right, I'm trying to find the music in photography, because so many of my shots are split-second opportunities and there is no time to be calculating.
 
I prefer the full-sized image: the noise/grain is less of a problem by far, and I rather like the composition and the background.

Incidentally, did you scan the print or the negative (or am I getting confused and you used digital)? If you were using negative film, however, and scanned the print, this might account for unnecessary grain, since there would be potentially extra grain in the print. Always scan the negative, rather than the print, if you possibly can.
 
I thought you couldn't scan film because the colour information is added at the print?

I have been asking for a long time if I should switch to slide film for the kind of photography I do; supposedly able to capture more information, making for a richer and more detailed image than colour prints can?
Because the eventual result for me is to display it in print rather than on the screen, I want as high quality output as I can get.

Which is preferrable in changing light, fast-moving subject, using telephoto kind of situations?? :confused:
 
Keta said:
I thought you couldn't scan film because the colour information is added at the print?

Ohh dear, you have been misinformed, I am afraid: film scanners are no less able than printing machines to compensate for the orange mask on colour negative film, and, indeed, do so quite automatically. Printing machines do make colour and brightness adjustments to the prints to compensate for colour casts or exposure errors, but the same (and fare more) can easily be achieved in Photoshop (or the GIMP, or any other such application).

I have been asking for a long time if I should switch to slide film for the kind of photography I do; supposedly able to capture more information, making for a richer and more detailed image than colour prints can?
Because the eventual result for me is to display it in print rather than on the screen, I want as high quality output as I can get.

Which is preferrable in changing light, fast-moving subject, using telephoto kind of situations?? :confused:

Slides may be better than prints at producing rich colours and fine detail, but they are not necessarily better than negatives: indeed, the negative's ability to have an orange mask that can be corrected in the printing process to help to ensure that the colours are balanced is a boon to negatives. You could always try slide film - modern slide film can be really very good - but, if it is ultimately prints that you want, you are probably better off sticking with print film, and scanning your negatives. Slides are really for projecting (and there is nothing quite like seeing your photograph a meter high by two meters wide in a darkened room!), although people do get good results from scanning them, too.

One of the main reasons that a print is often less richly coloured than a slide is that it has had to go through a second phase of (necessarily imperfect) reproduction (negative to print), whereas a slide only has to go through the one phase (image to slide). Any means of producing prints will require this second phase, although you can, of course, minimise the imperfections at the printing stage by using high-quality digital equipment. However, if your photographs have to go through two printing stages (first a chemical/opitcal print, then being scanned, and then printed again), you will definitely lose a considerable amount of definition in detail, tonal range and colour.

Ultimately, there is probably not a huge amount in it between scanning slides and scanning negatives, but there definitely is a huge amount of difference between scanning negatives and scanning prints.
 
:hugs:

:hail:

I am extremely excited about bringing my negatives to work tomorrow and testing them on the scanner!


:heart::heart:

:hug::
 
Keta said:
:hugs:

:hail:

I am extremely excited about bringing my negatives to work tomorrow and testing them on the scanner!


:heart::heart:

:hug::

Do show us some of your results here :)

(Just as long as your scanner at work is a film scanner, i.e. not just a flatbed for prints, you should be fine.)
 
Well it IS just a regular flatbed scanner.

It looks like I can get a good film scanner for $400, so I'll be picking one up on my way home today.

Results will be posted this weekend! Pixel by pixel analysis. haha
 
Keta said:
Well it IS just a regular flatbed scanner.

It looks like I can get a good film scanner for $400, so I'll be picking one up on my way home today.

Results will be posted this weekend! Pixel by pixel analysis. haha

I shall look forward!
 
Ah, thank you kind sir! *bats eyelashes*

I got the not $400 scanner, I got a $700 dedicated film scanner and it is my new baby!

Here's a shot that I didn't even bother scanning from the print . . . I need to learn more and play more (the first scan came in very very green) but this is an average example. (I scanned it as much 'full data' as I could, then compressed it down -8pixels/bit- in Photoshop so I could save it as a .jpg)

ejectlanding.jpg


All I can say off the bat is that the colours are MUCH deeper and the image just looks richer.

If it keeps raining this weekend, I shall be chained to this machine the whole time!!

(PS: this is the one I bought, Lens & Shutter had plenty in stock
http://www.nikon.ca/products/coolscanv/
 

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