Cormorant

[Dave Humphries]

I was quite pleased when I first found this local example back in May, this was from my third shoot, nice weather, but couldn't get as close as I'd have liked - why are telephoto lenses never long enough?



1/750s @ f8, ISO200, 250mm and a significant crop.
I'll also admit to cloning out a huge branch in front of the bird which ruined the composition.

Given the amount of PP crop I did, it now looks like the capture sharpening was overdone too (at nearer full size it wouldn't have been so noticable - you live and learn)

This definitely falls into the 'must do better next time' category, I'm also not happy with focus or exposure really, in fact I'm beginning to wonder why I'm posting it?

[kevinbythebeach]

nice pic dave,,,yah i know all about birds and branches ...those two things seem to go together..

[Wirefox]

Dave

Nicely captured against that bright sky. I guess Mr C was not perturbed by the fill in flash Seriously though I assume you spot metered off the bird. You certainly made the right choice with that Sigma lens.

it now looks like the capture sharpening was overdone too

Dave are you shooting jpeg or have I misunderstood ?

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Steve,

Ok, time to confess , this is a (poor) triumph of PP over getting it right in camera.

It is RAW, but I applied 0.5px (the minimum) at 120% capture sharpening in ACR. The trouble is I cropped the width of 4284 down to about 900, which made those settings very visible, so I down sized to 680 width for CiC, which helped a bit.

Metering was centre weighted with no special thought, just luck.

If I clicked 'Auto' in ACR, it wanted to up the exposure by 1.75 stops , I think I tweaked the brightness up a bit and only upped the exposure by 1/3 stop in ACR from memory. Then because the bird's chest was still black crushed, I did a grey correction of 1.5 in curves to drag it up some more in PSE.

I then further mangled it with; a mild LCE plus final (careful) USM sharpen and +15 saturation to finish.

After posting, as I still wasn't too happy, I started all over again, this time with a lot less capture sharpening, 1.5 stops more exposure in ACR with recovery of 30 to try and stop the white bits burning out.

Then processed again in PSE, with only 1.2 greys now, a tiny bit of Focus Magic, trouble is, it looks worse! After that, similar sizing, etc to first go. Sadly, I can't get the sky that nice colour now, so becoming increasingly depressed, I have given up for the evening!

Here's the second version for comparison;


This is what I started from:

[Dave Humphries]

Another shot, yawning I guess:



Exactly same EXIF as above; 1/750s @ f8, ISO200 at 250mm and a big crop in PP.

[Dave Humphries]

I assume this is the same bird, shot the week before, on my second visit.

1/1000s @ f8, ISO250 at 250mm.

Drying off in the sun:

1/750s @ f8, ISO250 at 250mm.

[kevinbythebeach]

the drying off int he sun is really neat...looks really cool

[Wirefox]

Dave

I love that last one. Especially the way the light catches the wing feathers. All these shots make a very good study.

Steve

[Dave Humphries]

Originally Posted by Wirefox

All these shots make a very good study.

Yes, I was beginning to think that, I have several more; drying seen from 'inside' the wings, in flight, in the water, etc.

I think I'll add those too and 'get it out of my system'

The backlog (of these shots from new camera+lens) arose because Adobe only just (25 June) released the ACR 5.4 update that included the D5000, so I have been unable to process from RAW.
I am trying to get my head round NX2 but even with Chris's help and research on web, I'm not doing to well, I will persevere though; I started reading tha help manual tonight!

Thank you both for the kind words, more to come,

[Shutterman]

Dave,

Good job, and I love the shot!