This is a composite. I cut and pasted the snowy owl into the background. This is, in fact, the real background, but it was so far away that I would have been impossible to include both the bird and the background with complete depth of field. The freeze the owl, I had to use a fast shutter speed. That meant a larger aperture was required to compensate for the light loss. My ISO was already high to ensure the 1/2500th shutter. To freeze the wing's and render everything sharp was not going to happen especially since given the juxtaposition of the two elements (in order to have the owl this large in the frame, it would have been at least 1000 feet in front of the trees). Therefore, the only way to get a shot like this, given the situation, was to use Photoshop.
4 Comments
Mar 9, 2016, 2:39:53 PM
Jim - Bob -- I made it look as if the bird was close to the camera. What I think looks 'weird' to you is that both the owl and the trees are tack sharp, and that was my point in saying this is optically impossible. You are not used to seeing images taken with a telephoto lens where everything is sharp. If you think about it, out of focus backgrounds -- which would look more appropriate here only because we know what long telephoto lenses give us -- are weird because we never, ever see blurred backgrounds with our eyes.
Mar 9, 2016, 1:58:36 PM
Bob Turner - This composite looks weird. The owl looks too big relative to the trees.
Mar 8, 2016, 3:27:06 AM
Jim - Thanks, Bob. The owl was actually photographed in diffused light, unlike the background. I've experimented with shutter speeds, and at 1/2000 with the owls there is slight wing blur. That's why I chose 1/2500 shutter speed, and this required 2500 ISO. My aperture was f/11 to maintain a certain amount of DOF.
Mar 8, 2016, 1:41:31 AM
Bob Vestal - Jim, beautiful composite. I am curious about the ISO that you needed. Looks like you had plenty of light. I am assuming that your aperture was F/8 or 11. Also, do you think that 1/1500 or 1/2000 would have been fast enough for the owl? I have a few hummingbird images with wings stopped at 1/2500 in natural light. That said, my shutter speeds for my best owl images were 1/2000 to 1/3200 last year.