Snowy Egret Portrait

Found this Snowy Egret on the Texas City dike a few weeks ago.  Was too close to get a full body shot so went vertical and got this portrait photo.  Had to go negative on the exposure compensation to keep from blowing out the whites.  Flashing highlight alerts, aka “blinkies”, works very well to show when the photos are over exposed.  Just remember on your histogram, expose to the right side but don’t climb the wall.

Was using my back-up camera, Canon 7D Mark II as my 1DX was back at Canon getting a new shutter installed.  Started to get a bright line at the top of my photos which led to some research on the web that indicated my shutter was likely starting to fail.  Canon confirmed it and got it replaced.  Had over 423,000 shutter actuations and it was rated for 400,000.  I’ve worn out several shutters on my other cameras so not surprising that this one would go one of these days.  Glad that it didn’t happen during my last Yellowstone trip.

Took about 7 days after they received it for the repair so it was time to break-out the back-up camera.  My 7D II worked well but it’s not the same as the pro body.  It felt like a toy in comparison without a grip attached, but it took good photos.

Taken with Canon 7D II with Canon 500mm F4 IS II lens with 1.4X III teleconverter, 700mm, hand held out the car window.

1/1600 sec @ F8, ISO 400, evaluative metering, – 1/3 exposure compensation