One fine day in the middle of the night

[Surprised]

Hi. I was at a local wildfowl place this afternoon -- a bright, spring-like afternoon -- and this particular duck (sorry, I can't recall the species) was busy splashing around, presumably as some sort of courtship display. In order to try and get a good picture of this I switched to Shutter-Priority (not something I often do) and slowed the shutter speed right down to 1/1300th. I think I may have accidentally tweaked the exposure too. Anyway, two things went wrong; firstly, by the time I'd sorted all this out and pressed the button, the blessed duck had stopped flapping around; and secondly, because I'd been experimenting, the whole picture looked as though it had been taken at midnight.



However I then noticed that the light feathers outlined the duck pretty handily -- and I began to like this particular shot. So my question is: have I accidentally created something that's actually not too bad? And was I about right to go for 1/1300th?

Many thanks for any thoughts you care to share!

EXIF:
Camera: Panasonic DMC FZ-28
Exposure: 0.00077 sec (1/1300th)
Aperture: f/5.0
Focal Length: 64.6 mm
ISO Speed: 400
Taken at 2:40pm GMT (mid February)

[karen_s]

That is one happy accident. I like it.

I would guess 1/1300th would be a reasonable setting if the duck were flapping around. Probably didn't need that speed for this shot but hey, it worked.

[photomattical]

I like it - the duck's eye is so prominent it really grabs attention.

Only a beginner, but if I had taken this shot I would have tried to brighten it up a little in PP to try and make the darker feathers towards the tail more visible.

Matt

[Surprised]

Thanks for your comment, karen_s: you can't beat serendipity! I will keep trying with various shutter speeds now I've worked out how to do it!

Thanks for your comment too, photomattical. As it happened I e-mailed this picture to our local supermarket who printed it out for me (it's a service they provide), and they lightened it up a touch so you could see a bit more detail. Somehow it didn't seem quite as good as the midnight black of the original (the eye was less prominent, for instance)! I'm sure I could pp it appropriately to get the tail feathers a bit more visible and keep the dark bits on the left really dark... but I'm not an expert in pp (I'm waiting for a new iMac and will probably invest in Aperture then).