Metering dark birds against bright sky/background

I have been somewhat struggling getting exposure correct when shooting dark birds against a bright sky or background.
I have tried all 3 metering methods. Bird always comes out way too dark so when upping exposure in LR or pulling shadows the noise is horrendous.

The only other thing I can think of, is to use exposure compensation and not worry about blowing out the sky too much since the bird is the main subject any way.

Here is an example.



And here is attempting to pull shadows/ exposure. Noisy and no detail whatsoever..

Change to spot metering. You don't have to aim at the bird to get correct exposure... aim at the base of the tree or the ground, dial in the exposure, then re-aim at the bird...

Black birds against a bright sky can be hard to process. I personally don't bother with metering; I set to matrix and use the slowest shutter, widest aperture I can get away with and do the rest in post.

I used to fully up exposure but had little success when using too much so now I up it a degree and do the rest by adjusting the darker parts through curving.

Whats a bright sky ?

Normally i never get chance to make any exposure corrections,the area i use does not allow for much notice that a picture is going to present itself,600mm helps though.

Here's one I shot against the light which is even worse than yours. Black bird, bright sky, into the light.
I never get every detail out in this situation but the degree I get out is purely a matter of processing. You should be able to get more out of yours (in my opinion).

SOOC:


Processed:


If you have photoshop try adjusting these shots in LAB mode. When I use RGB it plain sucks when pulling too much but in LAB it works different and I have more success with these shots.

I shoot BIF as often as possible. I set in manual exposure, 1/2000 sec, F8 Auto ISO and either a +1 or +2 exposure compensation. I have U2 set up with all the setting and shoot the first shot and look at it and decide on the +1 or +2 etc at that point depending on the brightness of the sky. Skies are going to be blown out most of the time but the sky is not what you are shooting. Shooting normal is going to give you an underexposed bird and bringing it up in post is going to give you a grainy bird due to the underexposure most of the time. Shoot for the bird so you get all the detail in the feathers you can.

Again, just my 2 cents.

I might say something controversial so be warned.

I think all that metering for birds in flight is nonsense. There are two factors that define everything; shutter and aperture. We don't have much choice when it comes to shutter since we want to freeze the bird. That forces us to use a pretty fast shutter depending upon the type of bird and how much of it we have framed. The aperture is defined by either the sharpness of our lens or the DOF we need.

So whatever the meter says; we are stuck with a certain shutter and aperture. It will rarely be overexposed and we can do little to get around that. All I do is make sure I freeze the bird and get as much light in as I can by opening as wide as possible. If I spot, center or matrix meter changes nothing.

Only during the rare occasions I overexpose, I up the speed or close down but that's once every blue moon for BIF.

Let me add something especially for dark birds vs bright surroundings.

They're hard to begin with but all we can do is maximize light using S/A. When we start upping the ISO, we increase the problem. There's very little detail gain in the darker parts and what we gain, we lose to noise. In case of the D7100 you gain about 1/3th stop DR in the shadows up to ISO 6400. If I'd use 800 to try and get more detail, I gain very little, pollute my signal because of amplification and blow the whole sky by now having 8 times as much light. And I still need to pull the shadows in post resulting in increasing the additional noise.

I don't use ISO but even if I would, I'd not gain anything by using more ISO than the shadow improvement it brings. It's better to use the minimum amount to get the maximum improvement and do the rest while processing. You end up with a cleaner signal thus less noise and don't blow all highlights. The meter will most likely tell you that you're underexposing but that's simply how it is. When you maxed A/S, you can't do much more regardless what the meter tells you.

Spot Metering and Exposure compensation of +1/2 should do the trick I suppose

Don Kuykendall said:

I shoot BIF as often as possible. I set in manual exposure, 1/2000 sec, F8 Auto ISO and either a +1 or +2 exposure compensation. I have U2 set up with all the setting and shoot the first shot and look at it and decide on the +1 or +2 etc at that point depending on the brightness of the sky. Skies are going to be blown out most of the time but the sky is not what you are shooting. Shooting normal is going to give you an underexposed bird and bringing it up in post is going to give you a grainy bird due to the underexposure most of the time. Shoot for the bird so you get all the detail in the feathers you can.

Again, just my 2 cents.

Click to expand...

Exactly what I'm saying. I will try the exposure compensation next time.

J-see said:

Here's one I shot against the light which is even worse than yours. Black bird, bright sky, into the light.
I never get every detail out in this situation but the degree I get out is purely a matter of processing. You should be able to get more out of yours (in my opinion).

SOOC:
View attachment 158977

Processed:
View attachment 158978

If you have photoshop try adjusting these shots in LAB mode. When I use RGB it plain sucks when pulling too much but in LAB it works different and I have more success with these shots.

Click to expand...

no offence J-see, but that is exactly what I'm trying to avoid. If I can't get any detail out of the feathers then why even bother. I might as well just go shoot sunsets.:indecisiveness:

Pete, can you allow some of the members to edit your file to see what options they can achieve? Haven't you allowed access via Dropbox in the past?

When I've shot some of the drama photos, some had really blown highlights. Amazingly there is a lot of latitude to bring back detail. My suggestion would be to use the exposure compensation button when photographing the birds to get them more correctly exposed then see what blown highlights you can bring back in post. If you are shooting into the sun, there will be limits on what you can accomplish. You may wind up with detail in the bird but not in the sky. The other option is to take a separate but correct exposure of the sky then layer it in PCC along with a shot of the bird.

hark said:

Pete, can you allow some of the members to edit your file to see what options they can achieve? Haven't you allowed access via Dropbox in the past?

When I've shot some of the drama photos, some had really blown highlights. Amazingly there is a lot of latitude to bring back detail. My suggestion would be to use the exposure compensation button when photographing the birds to get them more correctly exposed then see what blown highlights you can bring back in post. If you are shooting into the sun, there will be limits on what you can accomplish. You may wind up with detail in the bird but not in the sky. The other option is to take a separate but correct exposure of the sky then layer it in PCC along with a shot of the bird.

Click to expand...

Yes , I think I have a thread called Edit this RAW file or something like that. Although I'm not going to let anyone edit this one. It's horrendous and I wouldn't put anyone here through that. The only way it could be saved is to delete the file and try again.

I'm going to use exposure compensation next time and just not worry about the sky at all. Can't really bracket BIF shots.

Pete if you are going out to shoot BIF then obviously the best setting is an exposure compensation,its very rare i go out to shoot BIF they just happen,i could take the time to dial in a compensation but there would be no point as i would miss the subject,the quickest approximation is to take a quick reading of the ground and use the exposure lock button,thats why i ask the question a while ago if it was possible to set an exposure compensation to come into play via one of the programmable buttons.

mikew said:

Pete if you are going out to shoot BIF then obviously the best setting is an exposure compensation,its very rare i go out to shoot BIF they just happen,i could take the time to dial in a compensation but there would be no point as i would miss the subject,the quickest approximation is to take a quick reading of the ground and use the exposure lock button,thats why i ask the question a while ago if it was possible to set an exposure compensation to come into play via one of the programmable buttons.

Click to expand...

I use one of the User setting and if I am not mistaken it is possible to set exposure compensation in there. Flip the knob to U2 and you are shooting. But I really don't think there is a perfect setting to shoot BIF. But setting a good starting place with the user setting is by far the fastest. Just getting a reading off the ground won't set the shutter speed to a fast setting. Also when a bird crosses my path I end up shooting a number of shots before it gets out of sight.

I did try that Don,i think it was something you suggested before,the problem is without my reading glasses the settings on the dial are a blur and my arms are not long enough to get the camera far enough away to make them clear

mikew said:

I did try that Don,i think it was something you suggested before,the problem is without my reading glasses the settings on the dial are a blur and my arms are not long enough to get the camera far enough away to make them clear

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I have pretty much got the majority of the controls memorized for my D7100. IT was really clear the other late night when my wife and I were both shooting the Milky Way. I was having to set and adjust her camera (D7000) in the dark and could not find anything so kept having to turn on the flashlight. Was the first time recently that I have realized just how different those two cameras are.

Blacktop said:

no offence J-see, but that is exactly what I'm trying to avoid. If I can't get any detail out of the feathers then why even bother. I might as well just go shoot sunsets.:indecisiveness:

Click to expand...

It's simple: at times you can't avoid it unless you want the shot blurred. There's only so much that's possible. Once I reach my minimum shutter I need and I can't open up more, there's nothing I can do to get the light in I require to get the detail out. I can remove the lightmeter from my cam or could put two in there and the sensor would still receive the exact same information.

A 4Ds however might help.

On my bodies, when I shoot manual (which is almost always), exposure compensation does not work. I can dial in +5 and see no results. Don't you have to be in A, S or P for EC to work?

It only works in auto-modes (including auto-ISO) but it still affects what the meter indicates.