Evening Catch 2

[Carolyn Arnesen]

This was taken in March of this year toward evening over a local NJ lake. Unconcerned with the human activity on the bridge - runners, fishermen, paparazzi - this Eagle came in directly overhead and then down into the water for a spectacular catch.

S&H, levels, sharpened the bird, NR on BG, cropped for comp, tried to correct what seemed to be a magenta cast

EOS 7D, EF300mm f/4 + 1.4X, SS 1/1250, 5.6, ISO 500

C & C welcome

[Tobie Schalkwyk]

Love it, Carolyn! Nice wing position and clear facial position of this amazing bird. I might have tried a round or two of sharpening but it's beautiful regardless!

[David Kenny]

Nice find! It does seem like the have rebounded fairly well in our area. You captured a nice pose with the eagle looking down at its catch. It does seem like the bird may benefit from a little more sharpening as Tobie had said.

-Dave

[Diane Miller]

Nice catch for both of you! You don't say what your raw processing is -- are you able to recover any more highlight detail on the head?

[Carolyn Arnesen]

Thanks, Tobie and David, I see what you mean about perhaps needing more sharpening. I used smart sharpen in PS, and then tried more sharpening, but it looked over sharpened to me, so I didn't apply it the second time. But here it does look like it needs more.

Thanks, Diane, I used shadow/highlights in PS to tone down the whites. This improved the tail detail. I don't quite know how to increase detail on the head. Advice would be appreciated.

[Diane Miller]

It needs to start with proper raw processing, pulling out all the detail you can there. See the sticky here on detail in whites. Once in PS, you are stuck with what you brought in, like in a JPEG, Shadow/Highlight can help but only a little. But in raw you have access to all the tonal range the sensor captured. Sometimes you need other tricks, such as doing two different conversions and masking layers. Nik CEP's Detail Extractor can help, too, but it's a glorified Shadow-Highlight, stuck with what comes into PS.

Don't sharpen your master file -- or if so, very judiciously. Sharpen the output JPEG.