selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

Yesterday I went to a place where I usually see a couple of egrets. Instead I found this Great Blue Heron waiting for small fish on the weir between low and high tide. The camera's WB was set to Direct Sunlight.


Nikon Z7 Tamron 150-600 @ 250mm 1/640s @ f/8 ISO 800

Notice the red-yellow hues in the upper right part of the image. After seeing no fish he gave up on the weir and went around the corner to the right to rest in the shadows.

I moved to a location across from him and took some more shots. Even though there was more direct sunlight on the bird, the entire image was full of red and yellow - very little blue and green.


500mm 1/1250s @ f/6.3 ISO 800

I applied Auto WB in Capture one.



The improvement was minimal so I used the eyedropper on some of the white feathers.



I got almost the same result. There is just too much red-yellow light being reflected back on the white feathers.

So I did a B&W conversion. I moved both the red and yellow sliders all the way to the left (-100) to remove as much red and yellow as possible.



Now only the blue slider has any effect on the image, brightening and darkening the blue feathers. Moving any of the other three sliders - green, cyan and magenta - have no effect on the image at all.

kpmac Loc: Ragley, La

I still prefer the color versions.

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

The B&W conversion could not make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

It's the absence of any green values that ruins the brown images. Here is another shot with some green in it.


320mm 1/400s f/8 ISO 800

Even with the bird in the shade it looks a lot better.