Mallard with blur

[Iain Barker]

The weather has been pretty grim lately but I decided to go out and try some shots anyway.
As the light was quite low I have to use a high iso and a slightly lower shutter speed. I am quite happy with some of the results I got such as this Mallard Drake.
Nikon D7000 300mm F4 AF. 1/250 sec f7.1 iso 1600.
Slight crop of space above and behind duck, WB, slight increase to saturation and vibrance, and sharpening all in Lightroom

All C&C welcome.

[Randall Farhy]

1/250 or 1/1250? Either way, I feel you could've opened up the lens by at least a full stop to use either a lower ISO or higher shutter speed. If this was shot at 1/250, it's far cleaner than anything I've ever gotten of a duck in full flight using that slow a shutter, nicely done! The wing blur can be artistic or flawed depending on your interpretation- personally I can appreciate the blur when the body is crisp and the head is in focus, which seems to be the case here. (note the feet and beak). Now for the critiques: The bird seems dark, especially the Head-I am on someone else' computer atm so maybe that's why. Local LR adjustment brushes can do wonders there, including spot sharpening on keyelements like the head, neck and feet. A catch light in the eye would help, even one added in post-as the eyes on these guys are dark and muddy. Perhaps lightening just the eye and adding a spot of contrast to the pupil would do the trick. I think you have the colors properly rendered with a nice white ring on the neck. Framing is good as is the bg blur, though there seems to be to much of a contrast between it and the subject. If you're shooting this slow, have you considered fill flash on days like this?. Iain, nicely done-with some minor PP tweaks, this shot is a keeper.

[Luis Patacao]

Hi Ian, overall i like the wing blur and position and seems you`ve done a nice job in this. For the technicalities i do agree with Randall when it comes to local adjustments, mainly the light in the eye/head. Using fill flash would also have helped.

[Iain Barker]

Yes this was 1/250 sec so I was quite pleased with the sharpness of the head etc. I sort of purposely chose the setting and was in manual mode. I new that 1/500 would not be fast enough to freeze all movement so went slightly slower to get more of a blur and panned with the subject. The current processing is virtually out of camera so maybe I should look a local adjustments to the head.
I am a bit unsure about using fill in flash and rarely have my flash with me when shooting birds. Would this not also have created a sharp image of the wing within the blur? I am not sure if this would have added to the images or not.

Thanks for the comments so far.

[Randall Farhy]

Re: fill- as a fill, it may have added a little wing detail but would not have been so overpowering as to lose the effect of the blur as there is plenty of ambient light. If the flash became the predominant light source (adjusted through manual settings or by relying on auto or semi-auto modes) then the level of detail would change. I feel it's something to experiment and get comfortable with as it can really make a difference in backlit situations. FWIW, your panning technique is rock solid.

[Diane Miller]

For shutter speeds above your sync speed you'll need high speed sync, which will cut into power, but with a Better Beamer it might give you enough light. Well worth experimenting. Go manual on the flash to avoid the time delay of the preflash. You could get an idea of the power at some typical distances and camera settings by shooting a "50% gray" tree trunk or the like. You may need full power.

For panning, go to second-curtain sync, so you get the ambient blur trailing the sharper flash image. The other way it looks odd.

[Tobie Schalkwyk]

Not sure that the flash would have made an impact at the distance the bird was from you, but you might raise the shadows to see if you can lighten up the face a bit. Nice photo otherwise.

[Iain Barker]

Here is a repost. Not sure how well I have done but I tried lightening the head using the local adjustment brush in Lightroom. I also added an extra round of sharpening in Photoshop (35% unsharpen mask) after export which seem to have lifted the image a bit as well.

[Diane Miller]

I think this is better for the lighter head and generally seems to have more detail, but not really possible to "sharpen" very soft detail, at least at our level of software.

There is a subtle halo around the head now, probably from the LR brush. I prefer to do things like that in PS where I have control down to pixel detail if needed. I prefer the lower contrast on the water in the original. But this is better than any ducks in flight I've shot, so take my "criticism" with a grain of salt!

[Iain Barker]

Thanks Diane, I would normally go to photoshop but thought I would have a go in lightroom the problem is you can't tell exactly where you are applying the local adjustments to like you can with a mask in photoshop. It also didn't help that when I went back to Lightroom I had lost my original adjustments which is why the water must be different. I needed to find how to restore the adjustments from a backup but haven't had to do this before.
I don't take it as criticism but as critique and it is the only way we can all learn and why this forum is so great.

[Diane Miller]

When you take a RAW file from LR into PS, the adjustments are "cooked" into the BG layer. You can bring it in as a Smart Object and will be able to go back to tweak the adjustments, but it isn't a lot of use because if you do, any cloning layers (you can clone bits and pieces to a new empty layer) won't match and adjustment layers may need to be tweaked.

So if it was PS file that you took back to LR, the adjustments are no longer available. But if you go to the accompanying original RAW file (which I keep next to the RAW in the filmstrip) the adjustment slider positions are all still there (unless something happened to the .xmp sidecar file or the library got corrupted).

Masked adjustments in LR are best for vaguely defined areas. When I'm doing something like lightening that head, even in PS, I often won't try to match the outline perfectly. Rather, I'll paint an area that stays completely inside the head, with a slightly feathered edge. That gives it a very subtle 3D or studio lighting look. That might work well in LR if you zoom in enough but most people find the adjustment brush a little clumsy compared to masking in PS.

[Tobie Schalkwyk]

Bottom line: it's definitely the best attempt so far, Iain - well done! I wonder if we can transfer Diane's LR / PS knowledge into our brains somehow? There appears to be many hours of study and practice stored down there!

[Iain Barker]

Diane I didn't go into photoshop on my original post but when I went back to it in lightroom it was back to its original state like I had pressed reset then exited the program. Is there a way to restore the processing adjustments from a catalogue backup? When I work in photoshop I try and do that last and use a smart object as you suggest then when you save and go back to lightroom you still have the version from before going to photoshop.
I agree with Tobie you have a great kmowledge of processing that I wish I had.

[Diane Miller]

Iain, it sounds like the first (earliest) state in the History panel got checked. Does it still show the various history states? If so, just click on the top one. But if you came in and it was on an earlier state and then you made any adjustment, that wiped out the states that had been above it. I'd be hesitant to mess with trying to restore from an earlier catalog as you can't do it for just one image, and a glitch coud be a major disaster.

But, if you have checked the preference to write adjustments to an .xmp file (my recommendation but not the default, for reasons I don't understand) you could go to a backup disk and copy that .xmp file back -- that should do it.

There are two ways to get "great knowledge" of processing. One of them is to be born with it... I think I'll try that in my next life -- would save a lot of time. :bg3:

[Randall Farhy]

The adjustments really helped on the bird here Iain. I actually prefer the brush controls in L/R, especially the one click feature that allows size change on the fly. I find I can blend the edges a little better with that tool but it's probably because that's where I started, CS and layer masks are new to me. I'm with Toby-we have to assimilate all of Diane's PS/LR experience and knowledge for the collective!

[Diane Miller]

Thanks! You'll find some of it in the Stickies at the top of this forum. Masking is covered there and it is a very powerful feature.