Confronting the blinkies -- white bird (Egret) in flight

[ssheipel]

I'd estimate that the vast majority of the Great Egret shots I've taken have the whites blown out; mostly cause I've rarely been specifically shooting them -- they show up and I (sloppy photographer I am) point the camera, check basic exposure and then shoot. On the day this shot was taken it was all Great Egrets and more Great Egrets, so I turned the brain down and had some actual thoughts about exposing for the white feathers. Still did more than I'd have liked in post, but all the data was there on both ends of the histogram to play with My favourite detail of the shot are the drops of water falling from the feet

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[Jonathan]

I'd estimate that the vast majority of the Great Egret shots I've taken have the whites blown out; mostly cause I've rarely been specifically shooting them -- they show up and I (sloppy photographer I am) point the camera, check basic exposure and then shoot. On the day this shot was taken it was all Great Egrets and more Great Egrets, so I turned the brain down and had some actual thoughts about exposing for the white feathers. Still did more than I'd have liked in post, but all the data was there on both ends of the histogram to play with My favourite detail of the shot are the drops of water falling from the feet

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Very nice! As you described, it can be difficult dealing with whites on animals, well done here!

 

[Callie]

Nice one, Steven.
My rule of thumb, and I must have about 40k images of white birds, -0,7 to -1 EV. Lately, I even push it to -1,5 EV.
But I do not know how the Z bodies perform.

 

[rduckw]

Well done. I have the same experience when there are multiple different colored birds and the action is fast....low keeper rate. When I'm not rushed usually -1 EV does help. I've just about given up shooting white birds more than I hour after sunrise

 

[Elbert]

Very nice job of avoiding the blinkies. In these situations I keep the histogram in the viewfinder and am constantly checking for blown highlights. However I've noticed that, since the histogram is of the embedded jpeg not the actual raw, a little spike on the right usually is no problem.

 

[bleirer]

On my phone the flat part of the wing is detail-less. Could be just a limitation of my phone but thought you might want to know. I'm not saying i do better. I think we get that just wrong angle between our position, the sun, and the angle of the wing and the white feathers are like a mirror. So one wing position can be fine and the next blown.

My camera doesn't have real time blinkies, so I set it to 2 second preview which only kicks in when I release the the bbf. So it makes it possible to take a test shot and adjust ec, but still shoot bursts without the preview popping up except when I want it to, by holding the bbf.