This seems oof to me Kevin and parts of the bird's head blends in too well with the background. We all learn from these experiences, lol...I have a lot of these shots myself.
HI Kevin, is your monitor calibrated? I think many of us enjoy seeing your photos and your passion for shooting animals definitely shows. Like the others I notice highlights seem a bit hot/over exposed so I was wondering if your monitor is showing detail on the swan feathers, or where the nuthatch and sky blend, or the water in the mallard shot? Even looking back in other shots the sky or the white of the horses seems to lack detail. Quite an easy fix to overcome the camera meter not quite reading the scene the best, but I was curious if you see similar on your monitor as well?
To be honest they look o.k on mine The birds shot at home I have a problem with next door has painted a wall white so my backrounds are difficult to get right
not sure on your camera if you can have the histogram live while shooting, it helped me and still does alot in difficult to see shots. nice timed shot with its mouth open
Yeah think it has live histogram sometimes theres not a lot of time with birds they don't hang around
No worries about the histogram or trying to take away from getting the right timing on the shot. If you look at the histogram you can tell if your highlights are blown by if its spiking off the chart, or if the images flashes where pixels are blown out. The camera is only so smart with its metering algorithms may not know what your exactly metering for, that is where someone can manually dial in over or under exposure while shooting... or tweak in post production. The upside is raw can capture more detail than is shown so you can pull in so highlight and shadow detail if its not too far off. The reason I asked about the monitor is that multiple of us seem to see the image as a bit bright or washed out on the highlights, and that is a simple enough fix, but I wanted to make sure you were seeing the same first.
thanks I only got this 80 a couple of weeks ago still getting to grips with it appreciate the feedback
I would love to help if that's OK? For this shot the shutter speed needs to be increased to freeze the motion and capture fine details. I'd love for you to try these settings for your wildlife shots and use RAW. Set your dial to Tv mode. Set the Shutter Speed to 1600 and ISO to Auto. Set Spot Focus and Spot Metering and save the settings into a Custom Setting (C1 or C2). You can also use Manual with the same settings. Set colour space to sRGB. This is good for when you are shooting images that will be displayed on the internet or on a screen. Here's a pic of a magpie I shot recently and these were the settings. 1/1600 sec | f/6.3 | ISO 500 | 400 mm | Manual | Spot Metering
