The challenge with shooting a bald eagle at midday is the contrast. The white feathers of the head can so easily be blown out -- meaning no texture or detail -- and the underside of the dark wings can easily become solid black, also with no detail. The exposure is a balancing act, but even so, there are limits to what a digital sensor can do. I underexposed this shot by two full f/stops in an attempt to save detail in the head. I thought maybe, just maybe, I could open up the shadows in post-processing to reveal the detail in the wings. If this were film, it would be totally hopeless, but RAW files make the difference. Even though I was significantly underexposed, those white feathers that received direct sunlight were still blown out. I was able, in fact, to open the shadows, and the noise that resulted was mitigated with Topaz DeNoise AI. For the head feathers, I cloned the white head feathers from another eagle in flight, this time underexposed by 3 full f/stops, so that enabled me to replace the lost feather detail from the original shot. My settings were 1/3200, f14, and 2000 ISO. I used a small lens aperture to insure both wing tips were sharp.
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