Help, it looked much better than this

[Yisehaq]

Hey all,
I really need your help on this one. I took this picture the other day as I was trying to get acquainted with my flash.

There were some group of these birds which were so beautiful (my picture has not made any justice to what they were wearing obviously). Because they were so unsettled I just tried to use raw to fix the exposure on my PC. But nothing seems to work. I couldn't even get the color and texture of the feathers. Any Advice would be appreciated.


exif
I used my flash 550EX at high speed sync mode. shutter speed 1/1600, ISO 800 Ap 5.6 focal length 300mm at 70-300mm sigma lens

[jmayoff]

I'm no expert on this by any means, so take what I say with a grain of salt. Two things strike me about your situation.

1) The long end of a 300mm lens would mean the bird was pretty far away from you. Would the flash really have much of an effect at that distance?
2) ISO 800 is pretty high

I was going to say something about it being slightly blurred, but I think that has more to do with the compression after uploading the image to the website.

[EJC]

Hi Yisehaq

I'm having the same sort of problem on most of my long shots with a Sigma 150 -500 lens. The frustrating thing is occasionally shots come out beautifully and I don't know what I did differently because my settings didn't change.

Regarding exposure, the bright back ground is likely causing the bird to look dark. What was your metering mode set too?

Regarding sharpness, were you using a tripod? Was stabilization turned off?
I read somewhere that taking 2 or 3 shots on high speed continuous mode helps because you aren't moving your shutter finger after the first exposure.

I hope this helps.

[Marko]

The overall exposure on this image looks okay to me. This image looks like it's compressed, is it? As long as it's less than 250K it can be uploaded directly without compression. what is the ORIGINAL size of the file before you uploaded it as NOW it is 67k.

I'm assuming that your main problem with the image is the bird's face and feathers look dark. But the background looks excellent and any more exposure may have clipped parts of the background. You were right in using flash to add light to the bird (foreground).

Jmayoff makes a strong case with the flash distance. I can see the flash in the bird's eye but it could be brighter. So either you were too far (you can SEE the range in feet/meters at the back of your flash for every aperture) OR your flash wasn't putting out enough power and you should have increased the flash's output.

The iso 800 is fine on many dslr cameras, and I use it often to get faster shutter speeds.
Hope that helps
Marko

[Yisehaq]

Thanks you all, that is a lot of help.

Just to clarrify some of your queries,

The long end of a 300mm lens would mean the bird was pretty far away from you

I used this mm because I wanted the bird to look a bit bigger as it was pretty small. But for the flash it shouldn't be too far my be around 5-6m.

ISO 800 is pretty high

may be. In my 350D, i am not so confortable to go above 400 but sometimes it works.
[

QUOTE]What was your metering mode set too? Regarding sharpness, were you using a tripod? Was stabilization turned off?
[/QUOTE]

Evaluative. I didn't use any tripod or monopod and I don't have IS lens:cry-an: I thought 1/1600 use fast enough to be held by hand at 300mm.

This image looks like it's compressed, is it?

I shot the picture in RAW and it looks compressed too. flattening it didn't change the quality that much.


Thank you very much for your comments.