![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/black-billed-magpie-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"black-billed-magpie-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\nA somewhat startling example of a problem many bird photographers, including yours truly, like to bitch about – the\u00a0daunting challenge\u00a0of exposing black and white birds properly.<\/p>\n
I’m not posting this shot because I think it’s a great image – it isn’t. But it’s unusual and I think it wonderfully illustrates the issues we face when trying to get a good exposure on the extreme contrasts of a black and white bird, or to a lesser degree any subject combining very\u00a0light and very dark colors.<\/p>\n
This image and this post may hold little interest for non photographers but I do like to cover similar subjects occasionally.<\/p>\n
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1\/250, f\/13, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n The magpie was close, so close that this version of the photo is cropped relatively little (to about 75% of the original) and in my experience that’s unusual for a normally nervous and skittish magpie. I’m not even sure why I took some\u00a0photos since I’m not big on head shots. I guess my photographer’s\u00a0instincts took over.<\/p>\n I overexposed the blacks in camera so during processing I globally brought down the exposure to get them as close to right as I could. The magpie has its head scrunched down so all of the blacks of the neck and upper breast are compressed into what we see here and at this angle of view none of the other blacks of the body are visible.<\/p>\n So here’s what’s interesting. Notice that everything but the blacks have all but disappeared because they’re so severely overexposed and the background almost matches them. In fact all those white feathers did<\/em> completely disappear in the original overexposed image where\u00a0I couldn’t even see the shoulders and the white breast. For some tastes this might be an interesting photo if all the non-black parts of the bird were cloned out of the image but that’s just not my style.<\/p>\n When it comes right down to it I don’t think it was possible to expose all of this bird that’s in the frame\u00a0properly in this light and with this background but the image illustrates the problem\u00a0to an extreme so it’s a little easier to understand.<\/p>\n Softer light,\u00a0all of the bird in the frame, a different background and not overexposing the\u00a0blacks in the first place all may have helped with the overall exposure\u00a0but even under optimal conditions high contrast birds are far from easy subjects to expose properly.<\/p>\n So you’re likely to continue to hear bitching about the difficulties of photographing them, at least from me.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A somewhat startling example of a problem many bird photographers, including yours truly, like to bitch about – the daunting challenge of exposing black and white birds properly.<\/p>\n