Bullfinch

[Iain Barker]

This is the clearest image I have managed of a Bullfinch so far as they eat the buds on trees and are often hidden among the branches.
The branch it is sat on had a twig that went half way across the body which I have tried to clone. I have never tried cloning obstructions across a bird before.

WB, Cropped, all levels and initial noise reduction and sharpening in Lightroom. Cloned out branch and additional NR and Sharpening in photoshop.

Nikon D7000 300mm f4 AF + 1.4x tc. 1/500 sec f5.6 ISO 1600.

All comments welcome.

[kevin Hice]

I see what looks to be some work down by the end of the tail that is distracting.Also guessing the branch under the tail is cut off too square.Overall the bird looks pretty good maybe a little soft on the head and beak.These little birds never quit moving I have the same problem trying to put it all together On the birds body I think you did a great job cloning out the branch.

[Ian Cassell]

Iain,

Good looking bird. I like the perch as a line leading into the image. I'm not sure your focus is right on the face or, maybe, you just need a bit more DOF. To my eye, there is a bit too much blur around the eye, which is where the focus should be best.

[Iain Barker]

Thank kevin and Ian.
I think I could clean up below the tail better than I have so may have another go at that. Ian I wonder if the slight lack of sharpness is down to shutter speed as I was struggling for light.

[Tim Harding]

The clean up under the tail is pretty obvious but I don't think I would have noticed the cleanup on the bird if you hadn't mentioned it - well done. Echo the other comments about the softness of the head/beak - the focus point looks to be on the breast to me. Little guys like this are really hard to capture in low light since they won't sit still!

[Diane Miller]

What a cute little bird, and a unique (to me) and very pleasing coloration. Shutter speed could be causing a little softness -- hard to know -- or the focus could be slightly off, or both. You were wide open at f/5.6, which might cause a slight degradation, too. This looks like its close enough that some careful sharpening could help a lot. There is some noise in the BG so you'd want to mask it and probably do some NR on it.

I'd try burning down the brightest branch, extending out from the head. Nik's Viveza can do wonders for OOF things like that.

[Randall Farhy]

Iain, what a cool little bird and nice comp-first I've seen this one. As noted-some minor tweaks brought the head back in line with the critical focus area of foot and chest. The eye area is dark with little detail to show in the OP. Selective sharpen brush in LR5 on head and linear feathers, along with 15 clarity and a +15 shadow on the black area of the head only. Output sharpen adds to the overall image.

[Diane Miller]

A great improvement, for me, Randall. As I said in some other post somewhere, the output JPEG seems to be a different species than the original, and can profit by its own subtle sharpening.

[David Kenny]

I like the subject and how the branch leads the eye to it. It looks like you did a good job cloning out the branch. The only thing I noticed was the area under the tail close to the body looks a little strange - possibly from cloning? I also noticed some noise as well but that can be easily fixed. I like what randall did in the repost as well especially to the eye.

[Iain Barker]

Thanks everyone. I thought I would be interesting to post an export of the original to show what I started with. Not the best starting image but I chose it to see if I could clone the twig across the body. I found cloning the OOF area harder than the sharper area. You will see why it was difficult to get the area close to the tail correct. The original was also under exposed but with very few shadow areas clipped so I just go away with it. Increasing the exposure int post obviously increased the noise as well.
I like what Randall did to sharpen the image and I think Lightroom 5 allows more to be done on this than Lightroom 3 I am currently using.
Please let me know if you would have done anything differently.

[Diane Miller]

Amazing -- great job cloning and good crop!

[Mike Poole]

They're lovely little birds, and the re-edit has cleaned things up nicely.

I'm not sure whereabouts in Lancs you're based, but a really good place to shoot Bullys, is at Pennington Flash, near Leigh. There is a hide called the Bunting Hide, where they are pretty much gauranteed to put in an appearance

[Iain Barker]

Thanks Mike and welcome to the forum. Pennington flash is not too far but it is some time since I last visited there. Maybe I will try and visit there again soon This picture was taken at Mere Sands Wood near Rufford. It is a great little reserve that can offer many different opportunities for photographing different species .