Blue Heron in Flight

[FrankMi]

Still trying to figure out what makes good color balance, contrast and tone. There is a problem with noise, most noticeable in the shadow area under the wing.

C & C and suggestions?

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Frank,

I can't see any EXIF data for the shot;
How was it shot?
and was it a significant crop from the full image?

It looks a little small and soft on the subject, in fact the rock almost looks sharper, what focus mode and points were you using?

From where you were shooting, and the height of the bird, it is rather pointless of me to suggest that ideally, with the wings not merging with the rocks on the far bank would have been better - you had no control over that.

The only general advice I can give is just keep at it, even observing often helps, because you get a sense for when they are about to take flight.

Colour balance, contrast and tone don't look too bad to me (I've shot worse), the bigger issues here are as mentioned, sharpness; due to focus, shutter speed and PP sharpening I suspect.

Hope that helps,

[FrankMi]

How was it shot?
and was it a significant crop from the full image?

It looks a little small and soft on the subject, in fact the rock almost looks sharper, what focus mode and points were you using?

Thank you for the kind words, Dave. It appears that when I use Lightroom to export to e-mail size, the EFIX data is lost. Here is the original.



It was shot at F5.6, 1/320 sec, ISO - 100, 130mm from 24m away, Auto-Focus. He had just launched from the rock on the left. With shutter release set to continuous, I was able to get two shots before he disappeared behind the foliage. I was using the 55-300mm lens.

I selected the close rock and the Heron and tried to sharpen them a bit but it seemed to increase the noise in the wing shadow too much.

[Dave Humphries]

It was shot at F5.6, 1/320 sec, ISO - 100, 130mm from 24m away, Auto-Focus. He had just launched from the rock on the left. With shutter release set to continuous, I was able to get two shots before he disappeared behind the foliage. I was using the 55-300mm lens.

I selected the close rock and the Heron and tried to sharpen them a bit but it seemed to increase the noise in the wing shadow too much.

Hi again Frank,

Okaaay, take 2 at this post after my son managed to cut the power and lose take 1 after 1/2 hour's work/writing (but he means well ) good job the image was saved, or there wouldn't have been a 'take 2' post at all

I had a go from your larger original (1599 x 1066), it is somewhat under exposed, which doesn't help when bringing up the shadow detail under the wing - as you say, the noise (and jpg artefacts) come with it

If you're not shooting RAW, you really should, it helps a lot when doing this kinda correction

Anyways, here's my attempt;


I brought up the exposure overall
then dodged a lot to get about same brightness under wing you had
cropped; with a slightly different outcome
then did a total of four passes of 'sharpening' on the Heron only
Local Contrast Enhance with USM 15% 60px 0th
Sh1 USM 30% 3px 3th
Sh2 USM 30% 1.5px 3th
downsize to 700px across (from about 1300 after the crop)
Sh3 USM 90% 0.3px 2th
all sharpening applied via layers and incomplete erasure of the soft version above, so really, the only bits that got the full effect was the top wing, neck and head

In hindsight, I should have done something with the branches on far bank/island, they look untidy. ... and I forgot to WB

You should not be shy of raising the iso to get a good exposure AND faster shutter speed (time permitting - I know what it's like 'out there'). I'd be at 400 - 800 on my D5000, shoot at f8 for better IQ and with a shutter speed of 1/1000s or more if I can.

Hope that helps,

[FrankMi]

Hi Dave, Yes, I am shooting RAW, then converting to DNG in Lightroom for my original backups. I was hoping that Shutter Priority would have set the exposure correctly but it doesn’t look like it did.
Following your guidance as well could with my limited skill. I set the Exposure in Camera Raw to +1.00 and changed the White Balance from 5150 (As Shot) to 5500 (Daylight).
I searched the help files and found write-ups on how to do Local Contrast Enhance and then I knew what 'USM' was. I think I got it close if not right. I tried to clean up the brush a bit.
When I saved the result I could see that yours was darker and had better tone and contrast. For example, the rocks in mine are brown and yours are grey. This is weird as the original one I did had the rocks grey. I tried for several hours increasing Saturation and Contrast and lowering Exposure a bit (and many other settings) but never did find the combination that got me very close without screwing up something else! LOL! Maybe I got the Exposure in Camera Raw too light to start with.
Thank you so much for your help. Although I’ve a ways to go, I have learned a lot.
Here is the result of my efforts.