K-1 and DA*200 2.8
1600 ISO, ƒ-stops from 2.8 to ƒ8, pushing the limits of exposure to keep from losing dynamic range. Times 1/15s to 1/160s click on the image and scroll down the page to see the exif for any given image.

According to Yahoo Answers

A Raven is black but depending on which way the light hits it they change to other colors like bluish, dark red, or greenish.

Raven is black that gives off a blue tint every time the light hits it.

According to Wilkepedia

In sunlight, the plumage can display a blue or purple sheen which is a result of iridescence

Shooting with the K-1 (as opposed to with the K-3 yesterday), incredible how much better the colour balance is and how much more tweak able. I was able to create a single preset to use with all images.

SO what it the real colour of a Raven? Blue Jays use the same iridescence so irridescence as opposed to real colour can be a thing.

He can be pretty black.




But depending on the angle of the light....


And from the right angle...they get quite colourful...


So what colour is a raven? Same bird, same camera, different angles, light to bird and photographer to light.


Inquiring minds want to know.




For all who think ƒ2.8 isn't useful for long lenses and wildlife.



ƒ4 isn't too shabby either.


White balance is done on the non iridescent feathers just around the neck, so the same part of the birds is used for white balance on every shot. it really is changing colour in the light.

[normhead]

Thats the weird thing. As you move around the bird getting different angles to the dominate light you get different colours. In some images he's almost jet black. I have some image where he is almost completely reddish brown. I had far more exposures where the bird was jet black, but that just makes the one with colour even more interesting.

Looking at the bird, you may see colour a person standing a few feet away doesn't see.

[Fcsnt54]

I wasn't able to get as nice of colors on this common raven, but it is a more pronounced black. your bright color one is pretty remarkable as far as colors go, I can only imagine what the birds see in their spectrum.

[normhead]

Part of my advantage was I was shooting under the canopy with subdued indirect light. That makes the more subtle iridescent colour more pronounced. And even then, they weren't in every image.

Today I photographed another iridescent bird, a Grackle
K-1 and Tamron SP AF 33 2.8 and HD DA 1.4 TC

[Nightwatch]

K-1 and DA*200 2.8
1600 ISO, ƒ-stops from 2.8 to ƒ8, pushing the limits of exposure to keep from losing dynamic range. Times 1/15s to 1/160s click on the image and scroll down the page to see the exif for any given image.

According to Yahoo Answers



According to Wilkepedia



Shooting with the K-1 (as opposed to with the K-3 yesterday), incredible how much better the colour balance is and how much more tweak able. I was able to create a single preset to use with all images.

SO what it the real colour of a Raven? Blue Jays use the same iridescence so irridescence as opposed to real colour can be a thing.

He can be pretty black.




But depending on the angle of the light....


And from the right angle...they get quite colourful...


So what colour is a raven? Same bird, same camera, different angles, light to bird and photographer to light.


Inquiring minds want to know.




For all who think ƒ2.8 isn't useful for long lenses and wildlife.



ƒ4 isn't too shabby either.


White balance is done on the non iridescent feathers just around the neck, so the same part of the birds is used for white balance on every shot. it really is changing colour in the light.

Those are beautiful shots. While I do not shoot many birds, similar issues with color often arise with insects, some having very different colors depending on the sort of light they are viewed under. This can make moth identification in particular, quite maddening!

[normhead]

Those are beautiful shots. While I do not shoot many birds, similar issues with color often arise with insects, some having very different colors depending on the sort of light they are viewed under. This can make moth identification in particular, quite maddening!

And yet iridescence is a real thing in the animal kingdom. Green, red and blue tinted light is a regular natural occurrence. And often we don't see what the camera sees.

My advice is "take what you have and run as far as you can with it."

Don't even listen to what others consider to be the "correct way" to present the data. It's come to be accepted somehow that the white balanced light from flash mounted on the top of the camera with a diffuser is the correct lighting for images. But white balanced flash is in fact the least natural, most artificial way of looking at things.

The phrase "I only like nature when it's been altered to suit my taste" comes to mind.

If your image is in a field guide, and the light is the same as the image you took, your image will be the right one. The white flash image from the field guide will be the rendition that's in error. But, you can bet, when you view animals in the field, the artificial white balance of flash is never going to be the correct lighting. White balanced light simply doesn't exist in nature. We are always trying to adjust the light so the image is what we saw, after the brain did it's own white balance, which is never quite the same as flash. When I see scene like this,



The light is noticeably blue, but not as blue as what the camera will capture, because your eye compensates. Making the light look like the light was white completely white balanced would make the image very ordinary. I tend to leave the image as the camera saw it, with a slight adjustment to compensate for what my eye saw with it's internal filtering. But often the scene as captured by the camera is more beautiful than what my eye saw. In the above photo part of the appeal of the image for e is the interplay between the blue and orange parts of the image. Lesson the intensity of either of those colour values, and you reduce the impact of the image. What it actually looked like is irrelevant. Our eye reduced the impact. I feel free to show what was really there, even if we couldn't see it at the time.

[normhead]

A couple more examples, the raven was at his post yesterday.

Showing some colour in diffused light.


Looking completely black, in direct light.