Thread: 70-200 L f4 photo's

Since I was asking about feedback on this lens I figured since I got it, I should post up some pics of the results I have been getting so far. I have cropped some, and reduced the size of other ones to make it easier to upload to the internet.

Any feedback on how to better use this lens would be welcomed and appreciated.

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The guy in #13 was within 15' of the elk. I just had to get a shot of it.

Lots of nice shots there, looks like you have it dialed in pretty well. Bears just give me fits with exposure, same with buffalo. Was gonna say that dude looked pretty close to that elk. At Mammoth (Yellowstone Park) there is an old Bull that has destroyed something like 25 cars. Watched him put his antlers right thru a compact car's doors-pretty impressive!

Thanks. Yeah the bear one was fast. He had just moved out from behind some bushes, I got a quick shot and the rest were of his ass as he fucked off back into the bushes. Saw another bear today and it was the same thing but I didn't get anything of the other one other than a black ball.

I'd love to get a shot of an elk wreacking havoc on a car lol. That crazy.

Composition looks fine in most shots, but you might want to try hosting on something other than TGR. It looks like you might be losing some detail to compression on TGR hosting ... hard to say as I've never used them.

Also, are you shooting RAW? You should be getting better exposure on some of those photos shooting RAW. 2 has the best exposure (1 is an exception as a night shot) but the others are a little under or over. You can correct for that in most RAW software by checking your histograms.

4 can have increased fill light, highlights, and white balance to get the flag bright white and bring out a little more shadow detail in the jacket.

10 is a little blown out and 11 could use a little more shadow detail.

With the long zoom don't be afraid to crank up the ISO a little to make sure you get the shutter speed you need to handhold. Looks like you have motion blur in the flowers and other shots.

I just got mine 3 weeks ago and have been pretty happy with the sharpness, quick focus and light weight. First day shooting with it in Tahoe (XSi body):


edit: we are talking Canon, yes?

I am using RAW, but am converting to JPEG for online use.

Hmmm...the flower shots are 1/320 and 1/500. I shouldn't have any motion blur in them from hand holding? Could be from the wind maybe? In which case I should have turned up the ISO. Thanks for that. I'm always apprehensive about using higher ISO than I have to due to noise, although these were only at 200. I did have the focus on the center flower at f4, perhaps I could have put a bit more in focus. How does the center flower look??

10 is definately blown out a bit and it looks a little flat to me aswell. I didn't have time to set up the shot since it was such a short window.

I find that for number 2 it's just on the edge of some of the whites being blown out, so I didn't want it any more brightness to it. I'm wondering if the exposure thing is a monitor difference...brightness settings ect???

4 I will try the WB suggestion and the detail in the dark.

#11 for example, if I try to brighten up the dark feet, it starts to wash out the brighter areas and looses some color. I think maybe it's time to start using a better editing program where I can play around with curves ect... I'm pretty limited with the editing as i'm using the software that came with the camera.

I tried getting some more shadow detail out of the feet on #11 as per your suggestion but I can't do it without totally blowing out the highlights unfortunately. I think my weakness here maybe my post processing skills, and i'm also going to look at my monitor caliberation for the exposures being too dark or light. #4 for example I am seeing the folds, wrinkles and seams and highlights on the dark jacket.

Thanks for the feedback, that's awesome and gives me a few things to look at. Definately would be keen on hearing more from others on what they are getting on their cp's.

Yup...Canon. I'm using the XT body.

re: the flowers I think the compression might be playing tricks on my eyes. 7 looks like it has sharp edges yet the pistils/stamen whatever you call the polleny things are not clear? 6 just doesn't look as sharp as I know what lens is capable of, could be focus, could be compression. Try another host ... Flickr lets you host 200 images for free and fucks with color range a little bit but it's much better than Picassa which I have found to mangle photos, especially on the resize. I haven't tried Photobucket. None of those hosting services will tell you how they are recompressing, and that blows.

Monitor calibration is huge. I know my monitor has a little bit less shadow detail than my last one, but I've had it calibrated recently, so I'm a bit perplexed. My display could be crushing blacks on your jacket in which case I'll be heartbroken - I was hoping my last one was just boosting the gamma on those tones. If I'm crushing blacks it also means I've been compensating for it by overbrightening them. Might want to see what other peeps are saying about the jacket details on their displays. Also, I'm using an IPS display ... TN LCDs are tricky with shadow details because they vary by viewing angle, so much so that you never know how much contrast you are really getting! My IPS however is the cheapest one Dell makes (2209WA)

So you are using the Canon Digital Photo Professional? The interface is not great but you can do a lot in it. On white balance change the W/B button to "Color Temperature" and use the slider for finer control. See what happens if you put the eyedropper in W/B on the white part of the Canadian flag and click, does the rest of the photo go out of whack? Remember your RGB values are displayed on the lower left of the status bar, mouse over the white part of your flag and if the tone of the overall lighting is not important you want the flag to be pretty neutral, like 210/210/210. Once you get W/B dialed you can use the Tone Curve portion under RGB in the Canon software to boost the tone map of the bright white in the flag to get it closer to 250 /250/250 if you want to go for a brighter look on it. You can also pretty well isolate tonal boost of dark tones using the curve as well, such as the jacket or the marmot foot. For the bear, see what happens if you take down the overall exposure brightness then try to bring back up the mid-tones (middle of the curve) and maybe up the saturation by a touch - just a guess. I like to just play around and see what happens until I have the feeling I'm going after

I use Adobe Camera RAW. With good glass I find I never have to go into Photoshop on a well shot photo. The most amazing thing about Adobe Camera RAW is how it re-shifts the tonal balance of dark and bright tones using sliders ... it's super easy.

edit: also don't worry too much about blown out highlight details in #2, the girl's shirt is almost irrelevant as she's in background and in soft focus. Make sure you have the View Highlights and View Shadows button checked in DPP so you can see easily what's blown out ... does it matter or not? How does the quantity of highlights and shadows affect the feeling of your photo? Distracting or not?