Red-Billed Hornbill Rescue

[Edward Arthur]

I love the hornbills, and my first sighting of one in South Africa netted a total bust. Over-exposed, bad lighting and blown out mostly. But I was undaunted when I got home to salvage it.

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Canon 6D
Zeiss 80-200mm f/4 @200mm
ISO 1600 f/1600 f/5.6
HH and manual focus
Crop, lumo masks and Topaz Detail in PS CC

C&C welcome. :)

[Diane Miller]

This is nice -- I don't mind the white sky -- sometimes that's what we get. I don't see evidence that it was overexposed, at least not more than the ETTR method. The bird would have been too dark if the sky was darker, and lightening it would have brought up noise.

There is noticeable chromatic aberration on the branch that exits the frame on the left. Have you tried to correct for it in raw conversion?

Is this a crop? I'd like to see the tail not running into the corner.

[Tobie Schalkwyk]

Not a bad salvage at all, Ed. One can see that quite a bit of work went into it but it came out nicely. I agree with Diane about the tail.

These birds always make good subjects with their piercing eyes.

[David Kenny]

The chromatic aberration on the left is a little distracting but overall you did a good job saving this. Can you post the original for reference?

[Diane Miller]

It just occurred to me, not really relevant to this image, but do you have a filter of any sort (skylight or whatever) on this lens? I wonder if that could be contributing to the blue cast issue. I think you said it was specific to this lens?

[Edward Arthur]

Thanks, everyone!

I said overexposed up top, but should have said underexposed for the subject.

David, yeah, fringing abounds and is definitely annoying now that you point it out. Must have overlooked it when editing but will have to fix it.

Tobie, the eyes definitely have it. Maybe that's why I like 'em!

Diane, no filters used. But the Zeiss glass I have do tend toward the blues. A characteristic I like but not always desired depending on the shot. Nuances of color often escape me, so I didn't notice it here.

The tail wasn't part of the crop, just caught up in comp. Below is the original SOOC, quick and dirty raw-to-jpeg in LR:

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[Diane Miller]

Quite a rescue job! Good work!

[David Kenny]

I would be very pleased with your results now that we can see what you started with.