This Kestrel gave me an opportunity to capture an unusual image. The bird was hovering for about two minutes 20 yards away, but directly in the glare of the sun. Technically quite a difficult shot as most images would show a deep blue sky and blacked out subject. I manually raised the exposure three times to eventually arrive at this result. ( +1, then +2, then finally +2.7EV). The reason for the increase is to fool the auto meter reader. eg, the meter reads a bright subject (the sky) and automatically under exposes (darkens), however this has the adverse affect in darkening the subject too. Thus, you have to over expose, and these are the end results.
Whether you like the final result is debateable, however it is possible to end up with a correctly exposed subject if you practice with the exposure settings.
Personally, I'm not over-keen so you won't find me posting much like this, but anyway, here they are!
Your only other option was to pick up your gear and run around the other side of the Kestrel!! I used Canon's evaluative metering on the same bird, suited for backlit subjects and still went to +1EV.
ReplyDeleteThese are pretty cool. Such a pretty bird.
ReplyDeleteIts a method i use quite frequently,never the most pleasing images,but the difference between a usable image and one that isnt,especially for rarities.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely amazing shot.
ReplyDeleteJohn.