Indigo display

[Jim Thomas]

Not a great photo, but interesting behaviour. I caught this Indigo Bunting doing a territorial display and I thought it was neat how just the lower ffeathers poof out like a skirt. He seems to only do this when another male gets too close. BG was completely icky as he was on top of my old chicken hutch, plywood and fallen branches, so I blurred it. There was also motion blur on upper bill that I couldn't fix very well. Many of my BG have a slight posterization after NR and reducing to 8 bit rgb, can anyone tell me why or how to avoid this? And are there any special techniques for masking tiny fringe feathers? Oh, and before anyone says anything, there's an odd light spot on the feathers that looks like a dust spot, but is actually discoloration on the bird.

Thanks in advance for the help and critique,

Jim

nikon d5000, sigma 150-500 at 500mm, f6.3, 1/160 sec., iso 640.

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[gail bisson]

Hi Jim,
I really like "the skirt". You have given yourself a good critique!
The BG does indeed have a weird whirling effect like the rings of a tree trunk or the pattern seen on fingerprints.
I am not sure why this is. Is it a big crop? Did you raise exposure in PP? To me, it looks like it was underexposed but I think we could help you more if you posted the original without any crop or PP.
I see a lot of noise on the bird and the tail as well.
I also see a magenta cast ( easy fix in CS)
Why and what are you reducing to 8 bit RGB?
To mask the fringe feathers use refine edge in CS5 or above. There are lots of good tutorials online for this.
Gail

[Jim Thomas]

Actually I lowered exp a bit at raw stage because of the highlight on the bill. As you can see, it was a fairly large crop, but not extreme I don't think. I didn't think the noise in the tail would be so obvious at resizing. Noise is something that I can't seem to avoid, time for a camera upgrade maybe? I don't know how cs6 works as I use psp, and in that program images have to be 8 bit to use any tools. I can do levels, curves, sharpening, nr, etc. on the 16 bit, but for any tools I have to reduce to 8 bit rgb. I thought you had to do that anyway for posting. cs5 isn't like that? Anyway, here's the full image just converted from raw to jpeg, no pre or post processing.

Jim

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Hi Jim,
I really like "the skirt". You have given yourself a good critique!
The BG does indeed have a weird whirling effect like the rings of a tree trunk or the pattern seen on fingerprints.
I am not sure why this is. Is it a big crop? Did you raise exposure in PP? To me, it looks like it was underexposed but I think we could help you more if you posted the original without any crop or PP.
I see a lot of noise on the bird and the tail as well.
I also see a magenta cast ( easy fix in CS)
Why and what are you reducing to 8 bit RGB?
To mask the fringe feathers use refine edge in CS5 or above. There are lots of good tutorials online for this.
Gail

[Mike Milicia]

Looks like you also did some serious blurring of the background.
You do need to convert to 8 bit to post an image since jpeg is, by definition, an 8 bit format.
However, that should be the very last step when preparing an image for the web.
All other post-processing should be done in 16 bit to avoid the type of posterization you are seeing.

[gail bisson]

Hi Jim,
"Holy crap on a cracker" as Penny in "The Big Bang Theory " would say.:bg3: That is a humongous crop!!
I think that the crop size is 90% of the problem here. Also you must have done some cloning as well as serious blurring.I think all these things have lead to this problem.
For me, ( and I am not saying this to be mean) this would be a delete because it is just too small in the frame and not a great BG. You don't need to upgrade your gear, you just need to get closer.
It will be a lot cheaper to buy a Kwik Camo blind than buy a new camera. I always think that Tiger Woods can still shoot a 70 with crappy clubs or a million dollar clubs!
Also, I would never reduce the exposure on the entire image for just a bright beak. Far better to burn the beak only.
Gail

[Jim Thomas]

Ha ha, that's funny! I'm working on getting closer, but it's only 15 feet away as it is. you'd think with a 500mm lens that would be close enough. I didn't do any cloning, just blurred the crap out of the background. I really only posted it because of the interesting behaviour and to give me an opportunity to pose some pp questions. I mentioned the camera upgrade because even at 400 iso there is a lot of noise. Nobody ever posts their distance to subject nor do they post before photos, so I really have no idea what's considered a huge crop. Someone had said that the rule of thumb was that 'subject should be larger than the focus point." So that's not the case? Are all of these other photos of small birds taken at 3 or 4 feet?( I think that's the minimum focus distance) The postrization of the background seems to happen regardless of crop size, just more or less obvious. Getting really frustrated!


Thanks for the input,

Jim
n






Hi Jim,
"Holy crap on a cracker" as Penny in "The Big Bang Theory " would say.:bg3: That is a humongous crop!!
I think that the crop size is 90% of the problem here. Also you must have done some cloning as well as serious blurring.I think all these things have lead to this problem.
For me, ( and I am not saying this to be mean) this would be a delete because it is just too small in the frame and not a great BG. You don't need to upgrade your gear, you just need to get closer.
It will be a lot cheaper to buy a Kwik Camo blind than buy a new camera. I always think that Tiger Woods can still shoot a 70 with crappy clubs or a million dollar clubs!
Also, I would never reduce the exposure on the entire image for just a bright beak. Far better to burn the beak only.
Gail

[gail bisson]

Hi Jim,
For me, the bird has to fill 25% of the frame to get good IQ and detail. When I first started "extreme birding" (which is what little bird shooting is!) I would take a shot no matter how small in the frame. I eventually realized that all I was doing was devaluing my camera with all those wasted clicks! I also got tendonitis of my finger hitting the delete button so often! Just kidding, of course.
Don't get frustrated- get closer and be patient. I cannot tell you how many hours I have sat in the car or a blind and got nothing, squat, zero, rien, nyet, nada...Not too mention hiking in the woods and seeing nothing.
I wonder if you shoot exposing to the right. You want most of your data in the right hand side of the histogram and some blinkies in the BG or water or beak are fine. Exposing to the right should help with preventing posterization.
What PP program are you using for noise reduction?
I don't know much about Nikon cameras so cannot comment on that aspect. I do know that I had a lot of troubles with noise on my 7D and all my problems disappeared when I bought the 1D MKIV. But part of me thinks that "I" was the problem and not the 7D because people like Daniel C. and others take fabulous pics with the 7D.
I realize that this pic was indeed posted to show the lovely skirt and that you stated that it wasn't the best picture so no worries or judgement from me,
Gail

[Mike Milicia]

Ha ha, that's funny! I'm working on getting closer, but it's only 15 feet away as it is. you'd think with a 500mm lens that would be close enough. I didn't do any cloning, just blurred the crap out of the background. I really only posted it because of the interesting behaviour and to give me an opportunity to pose some pp questions. I mentioned the camera upgrade because even at 400 iso there is a lot of noise. Nobody ever posts their distance to subject nor do they post before photos, so I really have no idea what's considered a huge crop. Someone had said that the rule of thumb was that 'subject should be larger than the focus point." So that's not the case? Are all of these other photos of small birds taken at 3 or 4 feet?( I think that's the minimum focus distance) The postrization of the background seems to happen regardless of crop size, just more or less obvious. Getting really frustrated!


Thanks for the input,

Jim
n


Hi Jim,

The minimum focus distance of the Canon 500mm f/4L is about 15 feet. You can get that down to about 11 feet with a 25mm extension tube. The other option for small birds is to add teleconverters.

Ideally, you don't want to crop at all but how much you can get away with depends on the quality of the original and the intended usage.
For web size images you can crop quite a bit if you start with a high quality original. Here is an example image which is only 12% of the original 18 MP capture :

http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php/106693

It looks fine at web size but the largest print I could get out of it would be about 3" x 3". I don't believe your posterization issue is coming from the crop. It is more likely a result of processing the image after converting it to 8 bit.

Your noise issues however can be exacerbated by a large crop as downsizing the image can have the effect of "averaging" pixels together and reducing the apparent noise.
If you do a large crop and therefore very little downsizing, the noise in the original will remain more apparent. The best thing you can do to minimize the noise at capture time is to expose to the right as suggested by Gail.

[Satish Ranadive]

Except artifacts in the BG, Rest of the image is excellent. I used get such artifacts. Then I started processing all the images in TIF files and lastly saving for the web I applied NR in neat image.
I have applied NR twice once using brown part in BG and once Green one.I hope you will like the image.Please let us know.

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Regards,
Satish.

[Satish Ranadive]

Jim:
Another thing I forgot to mentioned that my most of the friend says that Sigma 150-500, gives very good results at 475 to 480 mm. instead of 500 mm.

Regards,
Satish.

[Jim Thomas]

Thanks Satish. BG looks much better in repost. I've just recently started playing with Neat image but it's still a bit confusing. the lens I don't mind so much, just wish it were better in low light.

Thanks again,
Jim
Jim:
Another thing I forgot to mentioned that my most of the friend says that Sigma 150-500, gives very good results at 475 to 480 mm. instead of 500 mm.

Regards,
Satish.