Grizzly Sow in YNP

[Andrew Merwin]

Mark III, ISO 400, 1/400, +0.67 ev, 700mm, tripod

Sharpened, curves, WB 5500, nearly FF

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Andrew, long time no talk. :S3:

What are you using to process your RAW images, ACR, DPP... these days? Just trying to base some thoughts for you.

Cheers
Steve

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Andrew - nice to see you posting again. Nice pose and comp but something seems to have gone amiss in the PP. IMHO it seems to be very oversharpened, especially the grasses in the fg and midground. Also the highlights seem a bit bright (and the snow unfortunately blown). You could try a luminosity mask to tone down the highlights but I'm not sure if it will do the trick (see the sticky at the top of the forum for luminosity masks). I do think the image is worth trying to reprocess.

TFS,
Rachel

[Andrew Merwin]

Hi Andrew, long time no talk. :S3:

What are you using to process your RAW images, ACR, DPP... these days? Just trying to base some thoughts for you.

Cheers
Steve

Hi Steve, Aperture & DPP.

[Andrew Merwin]

Rachel, you are correct, it is over sharpened. here is another one with less sharpening. WDYT?

[Rachel Hollander]

Andrew - the sharpening is definitely better. I know you don't have PS but I couldn't resist taking your rp and trying a couple of things. I did a luminosity mask at about 35%. I also reduced the yellows 10 points on the entire image. Then I selected the bear and opened up the midtones in a levels adjustment just slightly and finally I burned the highlights at 6% in the bg and fg. Just to show the potential of the image.

WDYT?

Rachel

[Andrew Merwin]

Thanks Rachel. It looks great & I appreciate your taking the time to do this. It seems to me that in order to correctly expose the griz I had to sacrifice the snow. Right or wrong?

[Hilary Hann]

Rachel has done a great job on the repost. Hard task to expose bright snow and great big dark bear! Really like the pose and environment despite the exposure issues, the snow tells us lots about the bear's surrounds.

[Marina Scarr]

Rachel's repost really makes a difference, esp on the FG. Nice details in the bear. I don't think you had a choice but to sacrifice the snow.

[Steve Kaluski]

WOW, a cracking job you two. :5:5

The reason I asked Andrew was to then be more accurate in my reply in mainly adjusting the sliders in RAW firstly before then going on.

Rachel you nailed my thoughts, I would have reduced the highlights, and tried to balance the whites/exposure, then gone on from there, as Rachel indicated. The sharpening was also an issue, but looks like you managed to tame that back to looking very nice now. Personally I think Andrew just has the edge on the bear, but Rachel has the habitat right, especially the FG.

The tinge in the snow Andrew top left might be I think from Chromatic aberration, which can be fixed in the RAW program.

Great work guys.

Steve

[Morkel Erasmus]

Good to see everyone jumping in and offering great advice and proper reposts :5
Nice scene Andrew. The OP looked oversharpened and overprocessed with artifacts in the BG. Your first repost is much better, and Rachel's repost is the best. It's hard to expose for the highlights and shadows in a scene like this. I would have gone 1 of 2 ways (for future in-the-field reference :e3)

1. rather expose for the snow and bring up the bear shadows some - not sure how the Mk3 would hold up, with Nikon kit this is the way to go as you can recover an insane amount of detail from the shadows, less so from the highlights. With Canon I mostly found I needed to overexpose some.

2. since the bear was stationary, it would have been a good option to dial in 2 exposures, 1 for the bear and one for the snow, and then to combine them using pseudo-HDR layer-blending techniques.

:cheers:

[Steve Kaluski]

Morkel, I don't think there would have been time for Andrew to dial in two exposures, but he could have set the camera to bracket them. As the snow is minimal I might have got the exposure right for the bear then looked at the snow in PP. Good thoughts I feel Morkel and food for thought Andrew when you next have your bear encounters.:cheers:

[Andrew Merwin]

Thanks Steve. I never noticed the tinge in the snow in the ULC. I looked at the ULC in RAW file @ 200% & determined that the snow is covered by OOF branches.

Morkel, Steve is right re. the time—I shot 2 frames and then she was on the move. I do like Steve's idea re. bracketing for future bear encounters. I will try that.

Thanks everyone for you observations & thoughts. I appreciate the help.

[Grady Weed]

Morkel I am with Steve as to combining 2 RAW frames, 1 for bear & 1 for snow. To much time for the bear to move and then wind up with a blurred bear. Or the bear blurring you! Rachaels re-post did a great job. I bet Andrew can get a great image from the original Raw file with some more work. TFS.

[Marina Scarr]

I am loving all the "food for thought" that I've been getting from this thread and this wildlife forum! Thank you all!