While walking down by the River Hudson the other day I had a great opportunity to get a picture of a Mallard splashing around in the river.
Unfortunately, I completely messed it up. Why?
- Wrong camera. I didn’t expect to be taking pictures of birds, and my camera didn’t have a long enough lens.
- I couldn’t get close enough to the bird. So, I had to crop a lot. I might have gotten away with it with my 33megapixel Sony A7IV, but I didn’t have it with me. The Sony RX100 VII that I did have with me had only 20megapixels.
- In my rush to try to get the shot I forgot that the background (the river) was much lighter than the subject (the bird) and did not adjust the exposure accordingly. Consequently, the bird was badly underexposed.
Still, you live and learn. The river’s not going anywhere, neither are the ducks and hopefully I’ll still be around for a while longer. So, if keep going down to the river (hopefully with a better birding camera) the opportunity will probably come around again.
Taken with a Sony RX100 VII