After H and Chris' beach scenes, posting these meager efforts seems almost criminal. This session was to try a different approach and compare images. Still plagued with overexposed areas, I'm thinking ND filter or a faster shutter speed and underexposed, perhaps increasing the f-ratio. Suggestions welcome... thanks for looking
The gull is f/2.8 at 1/500 Tv mode. The heron f/3.2 1/100th Av mode. It was late afternoon and broken overcast.
Processing, entirely in Rawstudio - Linux users will be familiar. Much nicer working with all the bits straight out of the camera.
Thanks Liz glad you liked them. I'm interested in how others deal with the bright areas. I've looked on the birding sights and find nothing particularly useful - maybe I'm looking in the wrong place.
If the highlights are an important part of the bird and how you want to represent it, I would check the histogram on the LCD at the time of shooting, just to see if they are blown or not. That is, is there a spike off the RHS of the histogram, indicating that potentially, you have lost all detail in the whites.
Of course, the bird needs to be obliging and to remain in situ so you can them make the necessary adjustments and then re-shoot!
If I was shooting, say, a white egret, and I was metering off the egret, I would over expose by around 1 to 1 ½ stops to prevent the white feathers being recorded as mid-grey.
If there are many dark tones present in the general scene, these may fool the auto exposure. In this case, the camera may want to let more light in to record the dark tones as mid gray. If that is the case, any whites will tend to blow out.
For birds in flight (BIF) against a blue sky, I tend to shoot at 1/1600 sec to freeze the action, F5.6 and ISO400. Generally, this gives me an optimum exposure for the bird and “ignores” the brighter back ground.
If the bird happens to fly in front of some dark foliage, provided it is not in the shadow and the skies are bright with sunlight, the above settings still work for me, so I do not have to constantly fiddle with them.
If I were shooting very early in the morning or towards dusk, I would adjust the settings and would not be shooting BIF, unless I wanted to artistically blur the action.
Dealing with highlights is a real problem. Where film would allow you to saturate, digital sensors clip quickly.
For isolated shots with your creature in the middle and out-of-focus bokeh, try using center-weighted averaged metering. I know when I'm doing weddings and it's particularly bright/dull, I will spot meter off the bride's dress. On some occasions, I'll take a meter reading off both the white and the black of the groom and split the difference.
With static subjects it's easy enough to bracket your shots and then blend them manually in post with masks. Your camera should give you AEB bracketing. Just set it to -1, 0 and +1, or -2, 0 and +2, and fire away. You should get enough detail in both background and foreground to blend.
Are you able to run Digital Photo Professional under WINE, or a virtual machine of some kind, at all? You're really not getting the best out of your Canon system unless you're using DPP.
Dennis and H. Thank you. Your time, experience and detailed responses are greatly appreciated. I'm printing your posts this moment, to sit and reflect more carefully on all of this.
CrossOver office should run DPP. Pixinsight has produced good results from time-to-time, not sure if it's ideal though?
great shots, esp the 2nd. 
