Fluff Overkill?

[lunathea]

T2i
f 5.6
1/1250
ISO 800
O +/-
250mm

Hello all! This image is sooc, was my first day roaming around with my new zoom lens. I'm pretty happy with how this turned out with the flowers around the gosling and whatnot, I'm just wondering if 1) there's too much negative space and 2) I overkilled it on the settings. It was extremely cloudy out (not a ray poking through the sky at all) and I couldn't get any closer because the gosling's mother would being to hiss at me. So being a newbie I'm wondering if these settings were even appropriate. Thanks ahead of time!

[karen_s]

I do like the shot. He struck a nice pose for you and the setting in the field with little flowers is beautiful. Very nice eye to see the shots potential.

As to your queries ...

Were it mine, I would crop off some of the left of the image. By doing this, the body of the goose would be centered but his eye would then most likely fall onto or very close to an intersection of a third and I think that rule would work well here. I'm drawn to the eye so that's why I would try to get it on the third.

The T2i I think handles noise pretty well at 800 so your settings were by no means wrong. But, since your subject was rather still, I might have gone for a lower ISO (maybe 200-400) and sacrificed a bit of shutter speed (but keep it over 300ish). I shoot for the lowest ISO I can get away with because I often crop a lot (my bird shots especially) and have found the images can start to lose some nice detail at the higher ISOs. If he were moving, then I would raise the ISO closer to what you used.

And if you have the software to do it, you might try dodging (making lighter) his little head, especially the eye.

Overall though, very good job.

[ryder]

I do think there is a lot of negative space and the bird is looking straight into the right edge. We try to give "face space" so there should be more space in front of him than behind him. If this were mine, I would crop the top and left side to go for a square format instead of rectangle. The shutter speed was very high, but I think this could be helped by a levels adjustment to raise both the brightness and the contrast (drop the white point to maybe 252 and raise the gamma or midtones to 1.15 or so). I think that would be enough to really improve this one. Remember when framing to give room to look into, move into, fly into, etc. It is much better to have the backside close to an edge rather than the front side of a critter. The previous poster was correct in that you want the lowest possible ISO. I have a Canon XSi and use "auto" ISO most of the time and it usually does not go that high unless it has no choice, but your shutter speed would indicate that was not the problem. Good luck and keep shooting, Mark.

[lunathea]

Ty very much for the feedback Karen! I'm thinking of using GIMP until I can pick up my copy of CS5 for school, just to play around with some editing software. Normally I keep my ISO as low as possible, I think I was just so excited to get this little guy I forgot to breathe and just started snapping lol. I was looking at the info from my bird shots the rest of the day and it's somewhat amusing seeing that I used a lower shutter-speed and ISO for actually moving birds. Like this one:

Got Food? | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

1/200
ISO 400

/facepalm

[lunathea]

Thank you for all the help! These little guys have a bit more growing up to do so I think I'll head back there this weekend and shoot some more, with more accurate settings .