Grey Heron

[Hazel Grant]

Not much available at Hilton Head in terms of wildlife while I was there in January. Too cold and rainy then, I guess. Did see this heron. My thoughts: the body seems to be pretty sharp but the beak? Opinions? Nikon D7000, 70-300 les, 300mm. 1/125, f5.6, iso 400.

cropped some. selective sharpening including high pass. slight color sat.

[Tobie Schalkwyk]

Nice! You probably need deeper DOF to let the beak appear sharper, but with that lens & FL you were already at the limit of what you could do. Have you tried sharpening it a bit more in post processing?

[Randall Farhy]

Hi Hazel, you did a wonderful job framing your Heron though it is a little tight on the bottom. What Tobie mentioned about DoF is true, it's best to attempt focus on the head as quite often the beak or bill area of a bird is going to be far enough off the focal plane to be soft when using the body as the focal point.

Here I believe the culprit to be the slow shutter speed (slow for handholding @300mm). Using a higher ISO will help, but F5.6 is still going to be the limiting factor in low light. Supporting the camera in some way will also help, a small beanbag, window frame (if shooting from a car) or just about anything you can rest the camera on or against to provide a little stability. Don't give up, better opportunities will present themselves!

[David N Smith]

Hi Hazel, I agree with what was said about the slow shutter speed but I understand your situation as I have the same problem because of the equipment I have (70-300 f4-5.6) it is sometimes hard to get the SS high enough with out cranking the ISO so high you have all kind of noise.

David

[Tim Harding]

I have had similar issues with DOF with my equipment as well. In my somewhat limited experience, I find that a sharp high-ISO image is better than a soft low-ISO image. If I have to choose.

[Sandy Witvoet]

Hi Hazel! Beautiful GBH! Striking pose too! Does seem that the softness may be from a slow-ish shutter speed... even tho "these guys" seem to be standing "stock still".... they twitch a bit and the slightest bit of wind moves their feathers. At the far reach of your lens, an f7.1 may be helpful, and ss of at least 300+. These birds are so pretty, and love how you have environment in the image without it being distracting.

edit: BTW, this would be a Great Blue Heron, rather than a Gray Heron.

[Iain Barker]

Hi Hazel,

I like you composition and the pose of the bird. I agree with the comments about shutter speed and aperture but I wonder if you focus was off slightly. The tree that is cropped on the left looks to be in focus which means the birds head would not be on the same plane. Did you have the focus point on the birds head?

Iain

[Diane Miller]

I'm late here (a couple of those days where the interruptions get interrupted) -- but my capable associates have about covered it!!

It's very nice to catch a heron in a tree for a change! Good work! Would be nice to have a little more room for the feet, if you have it in the uncropped original. I don't know the Nikon equipment but my main thought when shooting an image like this is to select just one focus point and make sure it is on the face. If the shutter speed is marginal I try to shoot a burst -- often one will be sharper. If that's a crop-factor camera, for 300mm my minimum SS would be about 1/500 sec or faster, even with good stabilization. Birds are frustrating and often the head will be less sharp than the body, even when I focused on the head.

With a zoom lens, stopping down a little is usually sharper, but often not a good trade-off with ISO or SS. And getting closer with less focal length and no crop is good, but usually impossible.

There is a bit of a blue cast to the bird -- you don't say what your processing is but you might check options to neutralize it. Nik's Detail Extractor might let you get a little more detail in the darker and lighter tones.

I just pulled it into PS for a look and see it doesn't have an embedded profile, although it appears you did convert it to sRGB. That means some people will be seeing it with very wrong colors. Check my sticky at the top of ETL on posting things correctly on the web.

[Hazel Grant]

thanks for your input. I'll post the original for those who commented on the feet. etc. I did shoot in a burst and this was the best one. I'll work on the DOF when I get into a similar situation again. Re comments on my lens---I am assuming you are suggesting that I go to a 500mm? If so, it may be a while, so I'll keep working on iso and dof with the one I have. I do appreciate your comments. Diane, I'll check the ETL you suggested.

[Diane Miller]

No -- I meant 1/500 on the shutter speed! That's a lot cheaper!! Long glass is great, but heavy and expensive.

The rule of thumb is to keep the reciprocal ss equal to or greater than the focal length, and of that's a crop factor camera, multiply the focal length by the factor -- so maybe 1/1000. But then you're jugging ISO and DOF. This is a frustrating hobby. Some people can handhold at very low shutter speeds (and maybe only some of the time) but most of us can't.

[Randall Farhy]

Hazel, I took the liberty of running your image through one of my high ISO recovery pre-sets ( I frequently use it to recover contrast and sharpness on my night racing shots) -while it won't put detail where it isn't, it does imply a sharper image by tweaking the contrast in smaller tonal ranges. Note the pine needles, eye, bark etc. If this were mine, I'd be considering the use of alternative processing to make use of the wonderful pose and surroundings.

[Diane Miller]

Yes, an improvement! Often people will use filters such as this on a new layer and mask out the effect on the BG.

[Hazel Grant]

What a difference! High ISO Recovery presets....is this something to be purchased? or part of PS that I'm missing?

[Randall Farhy]

Diane, I agree-masking for the bird and foreground would yield pleasing results.

Hazel- the base program is Topaz Labs Adjust5, which is a plugin for PS and LR. The topaz software comes loaded with factory pre-sets to get people started. It also allows full customization and the ability to catalog, save and share your own pre-sets. I have created quite a few based on specific criteria, High ISO Recovery is just a name I made up for this particular group. (I purchased the bundle a few years back and update when available) The software is also available on a trial basis here: https://www.topazlabs.com/ Warning-it can be quite addictive. While intuitive, it takes a while to become comfortable with how all of the sliders interact with each other.

[Tobie Schalkwyk]

Yes, an improvement! Often people will use filters such as this on a new layer and mask out the effect on the BG.

FWIW: forgive me but the 2nd image looks best. The 3rd one starts to look unnatural, specially on the upper wing. The feathers start to look like fish scales. But maybe it's just me...:e3

[Hazel Grant]

tobie and Randall, thanks for the input. Tobie, I can see what you are talking about. Must be careful with too much adjustment. On the other hand, it is in many ways an improvement over the first Balance!

[Tobie Schalkwyk]

On the other hand, it is in many ways an improvement over the first Balance!

IMHO the 2nd one: yes. The 3rd one: nope.:t3

[Randall Farhy]

Tobie, I absolutely agree- the contrasts are exaggerated. Presets (even custom ones) are better used as a starting point. It's best to tweak them once you've decided which one gives you the best overall appearance. A brush could've also been used to blend the bird and certainly on the background, giving even more subject/bg separation.

Side note:If you're batch processing for time conservancy, it's easier to adjust from a pre-set starting point, then save the settings (new preset) and use on the remaining images taken under those conditions.

[Tobie Schalkwyk]

Agreed, Randall! :5