Evening Grosbeak

[WillieHall]

snuck up on this Evening Grosbeak in the shade at 6000 ft in the Sierra Nevada for some close-ups. Always fun when you go looking for a particular bird and actually find it! With Canon 7D 100-400 L lens and monopod. ISO 1600, f/8, 1/160, 400mm. I did have a few images at f/6.3, but not the best. Cropped off about 30%. Using Elements 12: Exp + .1, Wh -7, Bl +7, Vibrance +12. I could not do better on the whites with several different exposures, this bird just seems to have no definition in the white feathers when viewed from 15 feet away! any suggestions? I did have the birds complete body in the original but liked the detail the crop brought out, what do you think?

[David Kenny]

I never have luck sneaking up on birds especially getting this close. You got some good feather detail for 1/160th. I am not to crazy about the comp. I prefer headshots or the whole bird in most cases. It seems like you were probably standing for this shot. Not sure if you could of got down in the dirt on this one but they may have helped a bit.

[Diane Miller]

Your post has "Generic RGB profile" attached. You need to convert to sRGB to post to the web, for people to see the colors as correctly as possible. Was this shot as a JPEG? The whites have that look. If so, there is no way to recover detail in Elements or any other editor.

Thw whites may just be that featureless but I see a hint of detail that I think could be brought out in a raw processor, but Elements is rather limited. It was good to try different exposures. It you crop up halfway to where the yellow feathers start you would get a more pleasing crop, for my taste, and minimize the white. Would be interesting to see a crop with the full bird.

This looks just a little soft, as though focus fell more on the shoulder. I try to hit the eye, but it's not easy. Your shutter speed was probably low for a monopod, but going higher would need a higher ISO or wider aperture -- a quandary. I'll shoot a burst in case like that in hopes one is a little sharper, and try to hold the camera very firmly to minimize mirror vibration. This one may be a case where a little sharpening of the output JPEG would help.

If you were able to get a little less head turn toward you, the beak would have been more in the DOF.

I've never seen one of these pretty birds -- would love to seduce one to my deck feeder setup!

[WillieHall]

Diane, I will check the sRGB, I thought it was. It was RAW and I like your idea of the crop up to the edge of the whites. I usually try f/7.1 or f/6.3 but was so excited to see this guy, forgot to check the f/ . It would have helped a lot, I think. Will repost something.

[WillieHall]

here is the original, cropped 10% off. I am curious, my computer says file size is 321KB, but here it says 371. I find that I always have to go way below 400KB to post??

[Diane Miller]

I prefer this crop, but David's suggestion to get lower is generally a good one as it can give you a more distant and OOF BG. Here your higher angle got most of the bird in the plane of focus, but it's not the most pleasing view. It's analogous to the suggestion, when shooting kids or pets, to get down on their level. (Even though sometimes getting up again can be a problem.) :e3

Wish the tail wasn't clipped. It's always a good idea to shoot several crops, especially as you approach a subject.

Now you have Adobe RGB embedded. You should convert to sRGB for the best viewing by the widest audience.

[WillieHall]

thanks all for suggestions, lots to learn. Diane, I just checked in Elements and I have sRGB checked in the organizer. Can anyone suggest somewhere else I should check when I export as a jpeg from Elements?

[Diane Miller]

I'll have to defer to someone who knows Elements, but the Organizer isn't where you would specify a color space. That would be in the Editor. But if you open an image from the Organizer into the Editor, maybe there is a place there to specify the space that will match the editor. For someone new to all this, I'd suggest keeping everything in sRGB. Fewer pitfalls.

Once in the Editor, is there a Save for Web option?

Googling "color management in Photoshop Elements" got a lot of hits. Here's one:

http://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop-elements/using/setting-color-management.html

[Arthur Morris]

Some basics:

1-when photographing the whole bird you need to avoid clipping parts of the bird like the tail in Pane 5.
2-when there is a ton of junk and debris on the ground you either need to put up a perch and get the bird to land on it or get down flat on the ground.....
3-Image quality decreases as the size of the crop increases....

[WillieHall]

thanks Arthur, I am working on these basics but hard to remember in the excitement of a new bird :) !

[Arthur Morris]

YAW WIllie. Been there, done that :)