roller

[Nishad Rangnekar]

uploading a full frame shot of indian roller taken in my recent visit to kanha in may09. Iso 200, Aperture priority Av 5.6, Canon 40D Canon EF 300F4L + 1.4TC , shutter speed achieved 1/400. cropped a little bit to suit my square monitor, i.e only about 5 %, C & C appreciated.

[Mrudul Godbole]

Hi Nishad,

Sharp image. Nice composition. There are some dark areas in the body and overall the image appears dark. You can check the histogram, and try to regain the details. While cropping, instead of going for a square crop to suit your monitor, you can decide based on what the image demands and then present it in a square or a pano crop accordingly.

Look forward to more..

[AB Apana]

Hi Nishad, I would have liked a cleaner perch. Rollers do tend to perch in the open and you should try for such a shot on your next visit.

Apana

[Nishad Rangnekar]

thanks mrudul and apana.. i will try to avoid those things

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Nishad,
The image is sharp.

The overall image is dark. There are areas in the body that has lost details in the blacks. I mean if you check the histogram then you can find that the histogram has touched the left frame. That means it is underexposed and the blacks have become textureless blacks.

I like the way the branch has curved. It would have been great if you could have moved to your left as you would then got the curved branch moving from left of the frame to the right. That would have resulted in better eye contact.

Ofcourse, you have to decide based on the situation whether it is possible to move or not. Indian Rollers are not known to be as scared as the Shikra.

Most of these points will not help you right now, but just keep it in mind for the next time.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Nishad Rangnekar]

Sabyasachi,
thanks for the info regarding blacks. one question, do u also think that increasing the aperture value could have been more benifitial? i mean the main bark could have been clear. As there was a good amount of space between the bird and the bg i think i could have still managed to get the bg to blur.

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Nishad,
As a rule of thumb you can say that if a tree or bush is about five feet away then it can be out of focus. However, one has to look at the depth of field of a particular lens and aperture combination and it also depends upon how far a subject is from you.

For example, if your subject is about 20 feet away then the areas in focus would be between 19.9 feet to 20.1 feet. That means about 4 inches will be in sharp focus. Considering that the tree trunk would be about 3 feet away, I don't think it would come in sharp focus even if you had increased the aperture to f8 or so. Though it would have been better.

The idea solution is to move to the left, and place the tree trunk and the branch parallel to your sensor. That would have given you the entire thing in focus.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Aditya Panda]

Nishad, overall a nice image. You've got it sharp focus, in good light. But the dark cast over the image and the twig in the foreground spoil it. I've tried editing it myself a little- its not possible to work on such a small file but I've tried to show the way to go.

Cheers,
Aditya