advice on post-processing some bird shots

[steve welle]

I don't do much wildlife photography so thought I would get some advice about optimal postprocessing of these shots since there are so many expert bird photographers here. I think these are male (red) and female Northern Cardinals that were flitting around outside my window yesterday (the female was pecking at the window much of the morning). The only lens longer than 100 mm that I have is an inexpensive Sigma 70-300 mm. I set it at 300 mm with ISO 800 and f/5.6 to ensure short exposure time (used aperture priority with automatic evaluative metering). Even though the birds were only 3-5 meters away the shots are heavily cropped.

Here are my main questions about PP since I am struggling to get a good balance between noise and sharpness. They seem a little too noisy but noise reduction (using Lightroom 5) at various settings prevents optimal sharpness.
should I reduce noise more at the expense of sharpness (I can't find a good way to do both)?
should I crop less so sharpness and noise issues are less noticeable and the birds are less crowded?
any other flaws that should be addressed?

Also, if you have any advice about the settings for taking such shots in the future that would be appreciated. I have a Canon 6D (which is full frame) if that matters.

[bnnrcn]

Hi Steve,what was your shutter speed? did you really have to put ISO so high?

I like #1 and #2 more.I wouldn't crop less because these are really small birds and they need standing out.I wouldn't sacrifice sharpness and I would accept the noise. Your question is very useful for me though , because I'm very new to PP too.Let's see what the experts will say..

[Shadowman]

Nice images. Noise isn't as troubling on first and third image as it is on the second. I suspect you are looking at specks on your window rather than digital noise. LR does a fair job of noise reduction, are you reducing noise first then sharpening?

[steve welle]

Hi Steve,what was your shutter speed? did you really have to put ISO so high?

I like #1 and #2 more.I wouldn't crop less because these are really small birds and they need standing out.I wouldn't sacrifice sharpness and I would accept the noise. Your question is very useful for me though , because I'm very new to PP too.Let's see what the experts will say..

The exposures ranged from 1/350 to 1/750. I think you're right that I could have reduced ISO. WAs concerned about camera shake but the lens does have optical stabilization and I could have used a slower shutter.

[steve welle]

Nice images. Noise isn't as troubling on first and third image as it is on the second. I suspect you are looking at specks on your window rather than digital noise. LR does a fair job of noise reduction, are you reducing noise first then sharpening?

When I look at these reduced in size for this site the noise is less of an issue than when I view at larger size on my monitor during PP. I am doing the noise reduction first and also have tried going back and forth between noise and sharpening sliders. I agree that LR does a good job of noise reduction. These were more challenging than usual for me to get good sharpness because I think that particular lens is not as sharp as my shorter canon lenses and I was shooting through windows

[bnnrcn]

If your camera is full frame and your focal length is 300 mm,your shutter speed has to be atleast 1/300 as far as I know.As I said before I'm very new to PP,I'm learning ACR and I think you have got it in LR5 too.

https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-clo...h=fundamentals

The video in the above link might be helpful for you.It is about sharpening and noise reduction in ACR butI think it is the same thing in LR5.So,it might be worth watching.

[Manfred M]

Steve – having had a look at the metadata, your shots are all done at ISO 800 at f/5.6 (I assume this is wide open for that lens) and shutter speeds vary from 1/350 up to 1/800, so with IS on, there should be very little motion blur. With a modern camera like a 6D, ISO 800 should be quite clean and this model has very good high ISO image quality.

Sharpening and noise reduction are effectively opposites. To reduce noise, you end up blurring the image ever so slightly (also known as pixel smearing). If you sharpen, in places where dark pixels are adjacent to light pixels, you end up darkening the dark pixels and lighten the light ones, (i.e. increasing edge contrast) which accentuates “noise”. If you are working in Photoshop, rather than Lightroom, you could create different layers and reduce their impact locally through the use of layer masks, but that would be a lot of work.

I understand that these images have been downsized, but the artifacts that I see suggest that you have done a fairly significant crop and what I see looks more like pixelization, rather than noise. If this is the case, then your issue is that you were not close enough and are doing an extreme crop is producing this result. Frankly, the best solution there is to get closer when you shoot (or to buy a longer lens).

[steve welle]

If your camera is full frame and your focal length is 300 mm,your shutter speed has to be atleast 1/300 as far as I know.As I said before I'm very new to PP,I'm learning ACR and I think you have got it in LR5 too.

https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-clo...h=fundamentals

The video in the above link might be helpful for you.It is about sharpening and noise reduction in ACR butI think it is the same thing in LR5.So,it might be worth watching.

thanks for the feedback Binnur. my lens has image stabilization so I can slow down to less than 1/300 although I don't remember what sigma claims regarding how many stops I can slow down and have not done my own testing.

For others who might reply to this post I have been using lightroom and photoshop elements for a few years and already know the basic mechanics of PP, but was mainly seeking more "artistic" advice about the right balance between noise and sharpness for wildlife shots, which I assume often are heavily cropped and shot under suboptimal conditions sometimes. Are there selected areas that seem too noisy that should be worked on using layers (ugh, I hate layers)? The noise on the downsized images here is not too bad and might have to be opened in a new window to see at full size. But I guess that raises the question of what size is ok for viewing these. If the details are clear enough in the downsized version then I suppose I should not worry too much about noise.

[bnnrcn]

Manfred,Steve says birds were 3-5 meters away in the first post.So I think because these are very small birds although he shot close to the birds he had to crop it heavily.Anyway 300 mm doesn't work very much with birds because they fly away easily when you get close to them.If I want to shoot birds often I will have to buy a longer lens too

Steve – having had a look at the metadata, your shots are all done at ISO 800 at f/5.6 (I assume this is wide open for that lens) and shutter speeds vary from 1/350 up to 1/800, so with IS on, there should be very little motion blur. With a modern camera like a 6D, ISO 800 should be quite clean and this model has very good high ISO image quality.

Sharpening and noise reduction are effectively opposites. To reduce noise, you end up blurring the image ever so slightly (also known as pixel smearing). If you sharpen, in places where dark pixels are adjacent to light pixels, you end up darkening the dark pixels and lighten the light ones, (i.e. increasing edge contrast) which accentuates “noise”. If you are working in Photoshop, rather than Lightroom, you could create different layers and reduce their impact locally through the use of layer masks, but that would be a lot of work.

I understand that these images have been downsized, but the artifacts that I see suggest that you have done a fairly significant crop and what I see looks more like pixelization, rather than noise. If this is the case, then your issue is that you were not close enough and are doing an extreme crop is producing this result. Frankly, the best solution there is to get closer when you shoot (or to buy a longer lens).

[Manfred M]

Steve - I shot an Osprey with a 150-500mm lens a few days after I bought my full-frame D800. I see the same pixelization issues I see on your bird images. Shot at 1/500th at f/11 ISO 1600 with +1 EV exposure compensation (the bird was heavily back-lit).



If you click on this in the Lightbox, you can see the pixelization. The actual print has been sharpened and had other PP work done to it.


This is the original, so you can see how tight my crop is:




I have this image up in my office at work and get all kinds of complements; it is a 17" x 22" print and you can see the pixeliztion if you pixel peep. I find that a normal viewing distance is usually roughly about the diagonal of the image (in my case about 28"), you can't see any pixelization at all.

[Geoff F]

Two little suggestions which I use when faced with background noise on similar images, Steve.

Sharpen selectively so it just applies to the main subject. There are many options for this depending on your software. The simplest method is to place a rough selection around the required area and feather the selection edges. Somewhere around 10 to 20 pixels. This prevents you having a noticeable line of sharpness/unsharpness.

Then go over any problem areas in the background with a light Blur Brush so you are selectively reducing the noise where blur is actually an advantage.

Sharpness and sufficient depth of focus are always the main consideration. A little bit of noise is tolerable; and it usually looks better in a print than on the screen.

[bnnrcn]

If you slow down too much then you might get blurred images because the birds usually move quickly.So I think it is difficult to make a decision about SS and ISO and it depends on the situation.I agree with Manfred about a longer lens,because I have a tamron 70-300 lens and I had the opportunity to try it only a couple of times,what I see is that it is difficult to shoot birds with a 300 mm lens

thanks for the feedback Binnur. my lens has image stabilization so I can slow down to less than 1/300 although I don't remember what sigma claims regarding how many stops I can slow down and have not done my own testing.

For others who might reply to this post I have been using lightroom and photoshop elements for a

few years and already know the basic mechanics of PP, but was mainly seeking more "artistic" advice about the right balance between noise and sharpness for wildlife shots, which I assume often are heavily cropped and shot under suboptimal conditions sometimes. Are there selected areas that seem too noisy that should be worked on using layers (ugh, I hate layers)? The noise on the downsized images here is not too bad and might have to be opened in a new window to see at full size. But I guess that raises the question of what size is ok for viewing these. If the details are clear enough in the downsized version then I suppose I should not worry too much about noise.

[steve welle]

Steve – having had a look at the metadata, your shots are all done at ISO 800 at f/5.6 (I assume this is wide open for that lens) and shutter speeds vary from 1/350 up to 1/800, so with IS on, there should be very little motion blur. With a modern camera like a 6D, ISO 800 should be quite clean and this model has very good high ISO image quality.

Sharpening and noise reduction are effectively opposites. To reduce noise, you end up blurring the image ever so slightly (also known as pixel smearing). If you sharpen, in places where dark pixels are adjacent to light pixels, you end up darkening the dark pixels and lighten the light ones, (i.e. increasing edge contrast) which accentuates “noise”. If you are working in Photoshop, rather than Lightroom, you could create different layers and reduce their impact locally through the use of layer masks, but that would be a lot of work.

I understand that these images have been downsized, but the artifacts that I see suggest that you have done a fairly significant crop and what I see looks more like pixelization, rather than noise. If this is the case, then your issue is that you were not close enough and are doing an extreme crop is producing this result. Frankly, the best solution there is to get closer when you shoot (or to buy a longer lens).

I like your osprey shot Manfred. I wish I could have gotten closer but they flew away when I was closer even though I was indoors and they never would have stayed around if I went outside. I agree that a longer lens would be better if I decide to do more wildlife in the future. Interesting point about pixelation rather than noise. Looked more like noise to me during PP but enlarging much more than you see here definitely could bring in some pixelation. Maybe I will use these to get some practice with selective noise reduction and sharpening in Photoshop.

[Ken Curtis]

Hi Steve.

Have you considered buying some plug-ins for use with Lightroom? Try purchasing the NIK (now Google) collection? It costs only $149. You can get it at http://www.google.com/nikcollection/ I particularly like their sharpening SharpenerPro software. I use Topaz Labs Denoise software for noise reduction and Nik for sharpening.

Since both pieces of software are designed for a single function, they are much better than the Lightroom (or Camera Raw) tools.

[steve welle]

Geoff and Manfred, you've convinced me to spend some time with selective rather than global edits. These pics might not be good enough to spend too much time on, but it will force me to improve my skills with the methods.
Ken, thanks for the tip about the LR plugins. I will do the free trial to see how I like them.

[Wavelength]

Great and lovely

[jprzybyla]

Hello Steve, the images you posted all appear to be shot with the bird in the shade and a bright background. That presents almost impossible conditions. Yes you can get an image as you did but the image quality will always be less than optimum. First I would suggest putting the sun to your back and pointing your shadow at the bird, this will use the sun to light the bird so you are on the bright side of the bird (much less noise, sometimes none). Second with my 70-300mm lens I will not use a shutter speed less than 1/500 and preferably 1/1000 or 1/1250. The reason I prefer the higher shutter speeds is that even thought my camera may not be moving on the monopod the bird most times is moving slightly, the faster shutter speed will freeze any motion. I use auto ISO letting the camera select the ISO for the setting I use. The aperture I use most times for a single bird is either f/5.6 or f/8, if a group of birds then f/11 or f/16 to have sharp focus on all the birds depending how tightly they are grouped. You asked about sharpness and noise, each is the detriment of the other. Sharpening an image exposes and shows more noise because the noise is sharpened, so shooting whenever possible to avoid noise is the best course. In Lightroom 5 my sharpening workflow is to set the radius first (normally between 1.0 to 1.5), then I set the detail slider (most times between the default of 25 to 50 depending on the fine detail in the image/feathers. The amount slider is like the volume control that dials in how much sharpening is applied. I take that up till the image looks crunchy and then back off till it looks good. Doing this first will show the noise at the maximum, now use the luminance slider to eliminate noise to what you prefer. Eliminating noise will blur your sharpening slightly so I always go back and tweak the amount slider. It is always a balance between eliminating noise and sharpening. Too much noise reduction and the image begins to look like the surface of plastic. As a last step I use the masking slider to control where the sharpening is applied... white gets sharpened, black does not.

Your first and second images are close but they loose detail in the feathers because you had to reduce the noise so much from being on the shadow side of the bird towards you. Your third image appears to be over sharpened and looks a little crunchy.

Hope this helps, watch out you might become addicted to this.

[ajohnw]

I wonder if these shots have been brightened up much during PP? That can be a sure fired way of increasing noise levels.

I have similar problems were all would have been ok if I had used some exposure compensation but the back ground would be completely blown.

John
-

[Downrigger]

Steve - these are nice birds. I look at each of my bird shots for each species as the next step towards a better one. There is a lot of good advice here, too, and I think a lot of it may be the extent of crop. At these sizes, on my screen, the noise seems not a problem and I'm wondering if you're worried about seeing it on your nice sharp birds, or in the background.
One easy way to deal with noise in the background is to simply use the brush in lightroom with everything at neutral except sharpness which is set all the way to the left - this usually permits you to simply brush away the noise in the background nicely. Maybe one of the experts here knows what's wrong with that because it seems too simple to be OK.

[steve welle]

Thanks for the post processing advice Joe. I definitely will keep in mind trying to get the optimal lighting in my future bird quests once it warms up around here, but for these shots I had no choice as they were flitting around in a narrow space between my window and the neighbors house.