I photographed this stunning scarlet ibis in Brazil. A bird with such a long beak requires a profile shot because the depth of field of long telephoto lenses is very shallow. Had the bird been looking at me, the beak would have been out of focus. For me, that would have been completely unacceptable. This kind of super saturated red can easily blow out -- just like highlights do in contrasty situations -- so I purposely underexposed this image by 2/3 f/stop to protect the fine detail in the highlights even in this soft and diffused light. Even so, I moved the highlight slider to the left in Adobe Camera Raw, and that made a difference in reveal the subtle detail in the wings and on the back of the bird. My settings were 1/500, f/5.6, and 1600 ISO. I captured this with a Canon 500mm f/4 lens.
0 Comments