Trogon Photo Tours

This month's newsletter is about exposure adjustments including when I use manual versus aperture mode.  It features images from our workshops in Galveston, Texas at Stevenson Woods.

Yellow-billed Cuckoo photographed May 2018 at Stevenson Woods, Galveston, TX.  Canon 5D4 500F4 1/2500 F5.6, iso 1250, Av mode, evaluative metering -2.0, Gitzo tripod, Wimberley Head.  During the late afternoon part of the background is in deep shade while the shooting area is still in bright sun.  If you are photographing in an automatic exposure mode (aperture, shutter, manual auto iso with exposure comp) with matrix or pattern metering you need to dial in a lot of negative exposure compensation to make up for the very dark background and to retain the details in the white plumage.  When I originally saw this image I thought I should have stopped down to try and get the tail more in focus but we had more chances with this species and even at F8 perched up like this I couldn't get the tail in focus as it's a large bird and we were pretty close. 

This is from a couple of days later, I'm not sure if it was the same Yellow-billed Cuckoo or not but soon after perching above the drip it flew down and took a drink from the pool.  Canon 5D4 500F4 1/2500 F6.3, iso 800, manual exposure, Gitzo tripod, Wimberley Head.  At this point I had changed to mostly shooting in manual mode as I wanted to have consistent exposures on the birds against the varying backgrounds.  This works pretty well as long as the light is consistent, so I was counting on the birds being in the sun here, not in the shaded areas.  If I had moved to photographing a bird in the shade it would have very dark without making a large adjustment to the exposure. 

Blackburnian Warbler photographed at Stevenson Woods, Galveston, Texas, May 2018.  Canon 5D4 500F4 1/2500 F6.3, iso 800, manual exposure, Gitzo tripod, Wimberley Head.  This beautiful male Blackburnian visited the drip stopping on a couple of perches before taking a drink. 

Same Blackburnian Warbler as above with the same settings.  This is a good example of how photographing in full manual mode can help you get more consistent exposures.  If for example I had been in aperture or manual with auto iso I would have had to dial in a lot of negative exposure compensation and gone from about an even exposure as in the above Blackburnian to something like -2.0 exposure compensation as in the top cuckoo photograph.  There is often not enough time to spin the dial that much.  However, if the bird's head had been in shade here, the exposure would have been very dark and in that case a program mode like aperture would have worked out better.  

Next the warbler dropped down onto a log above the drip, this was also in direct sun, I had dropped the shutter speed to 1/2000 just a moment before when the warbler was still on the mossy perch as I thought it was a touch dark (actually it had been just about perfect) so this image turned out a touch bright but I was easily able to recover the details in raw conversion.  If I had been photographing this shot in an automatic mode like aperture I would have had to add positive exposure compensation because here the background is very light as opposed to very dark, likely there would be a 3 stop difference in overall exposure if the camera had been metering in matrix or evaluative metering.  You just don't have time to spin the dial 3 full stops when you are shooting so it was the correct decision with this widely varying background to choose manual mode as opposed to aperture or another automatic mode.  

Eastern Wood Pewee photographed at Stevenson Woods, Galveston, Texas May 2019.  Canon1DX2, 500F4 1/1600 F6.3, iso 3200, manual mode, Gitzo tripod, Wimberley head.  There is a perch above the pond setup which depending on your position is against the bright sky.  So if I was photographing in an automatic mode like aperture I would have had to add a stop or two of light to get the correct exposure.  Again, in a situation like this where there is a bit of action going on you don't have time to make that large of an adjustment.  In this case the Pewee was hovering and returning to this perch, so I focused on the top of the perch using back button focus, released the focus and just fired away.  It was a cloudy day so there wasn't a lot of available light but I had set up with just enough speed and depth of field to capture the image well.  The reason I had this setting with a higher iso than I would normally use is there were fights between catbirds and orioles going on at times around the drip and I wanted to have enough speed to freeze the action. 

Scarlet Tanager photographed at Stevenson Woods May 2018.  Canon 5D4 500F4 1/1000 F5, iso 1250, Av mode, evaluative metering -0.7, Gitzo Tripod, Wimberley Head.  This young male Scarlet Tanager was just rounding into full adult plumage.  The late afternoon sun was sweet at this point.  Note that I dialed in -0.7 exposure compensation to keep details in the reds, even at that I still had to reduce the exposure another -0.3 in post processing to retain full details in the reds.  Reds photographed in sunlight really need to be treated like whites in terms of exposure compensation, it's very easy to blow them out and not realize it until you start working on it in post processing.  This overexposure of reds is a mistake I see often with images of red birds posted by photographers online. 

Clapper Rail photographed at San Luis Pass, Galveston, Texas May 2019.  Canon 5D4 500F4 1/4000 F6.3, iso 1250, Av mode, evaluative metering at 0, handheld.  Of course we also photograph a variety of waterbirds during the Galveston workshops and we can usually get some nice images of this species.  I was setup for action here as we have photographed this species running and flying.  You will note that most of the images in this newsletter were taken between iso 800 and 1250 which is what I consider to be the sweet spot for iso performance on the 5D4 and 1DX2, these isos generally give me plenty of shutter speed and still produce very good image quality.