Grey Horn Bill

[Vaishnavi Rajan]

I'm excited.

My first post as an individual member!!!

This is also my first hornbill snap. Dad, Mom & I were at Anaikatti (25 kms from Coimbatore on the Silent Valley range) this morning and my first snap for the day was this hornbill. It was even closer when dad braked our Civic and i was pulling out the camera. By the time i could switch on, it flew over to a tree in a distance, posed for just one snap before vanishing into the wilderness.

400D, Sigma 150-500 OS, F6.3, 1/100, ISO 400. Focus at 500 MM. Small crop to remove a branch on the right

Please do let me have your valuable inputs and advices.

Vaishnavi

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Vaishnavi,
Welcome aboard! We are all very happy having you as our member.

Good to start with hornbill image. This is nice. However, we have great expectations from you.

The branch seems to be ok, however the head is not very sharp. Ofcourse, another round of sharpening can make this look good.

Please check your image. Did you upload an image with size greater than 800 pixels on the longest side? And do you click in Raw, Raw+JPEG or only JPEG?

You have photographed this at 1/100th of second at 500mm. Typically the rule of thumb says that your shutter speed should be 1/focal length to get a sharp image. However, this is just an empirical rule. We get sharp images even at lower shutter speeds while handholding. Ofcourse the image stabilisation comes to help. In this case Optical stabilisation in Sigma. Next question: Was the engine on when you shot this? You should ensure that the engine is off else, it would affect sharpness.

While photographing though the car window, you can rest the camera on a folded towel/bag/pillow etc on the window and press it to make it stable. That would give better sharpness.

Initially I was thinking of a vertical. However, the branches frame the bird. So it is better in horizontal than vertical in this case.

Did you pull up the exposure during processing? Normally, when the bird is against the sky, the meter would underexpose. Please check this link on some discussions on this topic:

http://www.indiawilds.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1970

A positive exposure compensation of +1/3rd or +2/3rd depending upon the situation would give good results.

The light was low in this case. Wish you had better light. A further narrow aperture like f8 would have been good. However, the light was not right for you to further narrow the aperture.

You are nearly there. Focussing on a few small things will make you better. Look forward to more images from you.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Bibhav Behera]

Lovely first post Vaishnavi... Good to have you on board... keep in mind the points outlined by Sabyasachi and you should be on your way to clicking amazing images... :)

[Vaishnavi Rajan]

Thank you very much for your encouraging words. I will try to live up to all your expectations.

On Sharpening and loading a picture size - dad has not taught me Post Production and has told me he will teach me during this summer holidays. He uses Corel Photopaint licensed version and has promised to get me a license copy of Adobe this summer and teach me to use it as well.

So i only load the RAW files (normally 10MB) on Picasa, use the Export option on Picasa and resize the image to under 200KB play around with a little bit of brightness and contrast and post it.

I will keep the rule of the 1/focal length in mind (i know i heard from dad, but rule of the thirds, rule of focal length, rule of DOF . . . . too many rules like school :-))

No, the engine was switched off when i was photographing this. In fact dad told me he picked up this advice (switching off) from this forum :-)

thanks, i will use the car pillow cushion on the door and rest the lens on the same.

I have not heard of the exposure compensation. Is it a technique used on the camera or during PP ? pls do let me know. I will ask dad as well.

thanks
Vaishnavi

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Vaishnavi,

I don't use Picassa, so won't be able to comment on it. Bibhav and Mrudul can be of help.

It is important to get the sharpness right while photographing. Sharpening during post processing helps but can never make an soft image sharp.

Check the camera manual. I know you would not have read it. :D Most of the people don't read it. It is surprisingly informative and will help. I always carry it with me when I am on a long trip. You will find the details about exposure compensation to be applied in your camera.

Also, in your camera change your image display mode to info. So that along with a small image the histogram is displayed. If the histogram is to the left then it is underexposed. If it is touching the right then parts of the highlights have been blown. Your highlights will blink when they are over exposed.

When you click a bird with the sky in the background, you will find two curves/peaks. The sky would be obviously be brighter and would appear as the last peak. The first peak would be the bird. You will then realise that the image has exposed for the sky and the second peak is nearly at the centre. So your bird would appear underexposed. In such a situation, you have to dial in a positive exposure compensation.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Mrudul Godbole]

Hi Vaishnvi,

Officially Welcome to IndiaWilds :).

Nice first post. You can try to use DPP, the software you get with Canon camera. It is better s/w than Picasa. It is quite similar to Picasa, so you wont have much problem using it. Let us know if you need any tips.

Look forward to see more from you..