Theme - Eider

[William Dickson]

Canon 5D Mk3
f/4 500mm with 1x4iii
f/6.3
1/1600
ISO 1250
+1.3

Very cloudy today, looked like it was going to rain, so I decided to walk to the harbour and photograph eiders again:w3 They are difficult to get close to, and I wanted to get a portrait for this months theme. I perched behind a large rock and waited for them to swim by. Lucky for me a few did.

Thanks for looking and the comments on my last post.

[Karl Egressy]

Great image for the theme, William. Your effort paid off.

[Daniel Cadieux]

I like the chosen crop that lets us see the nice head-to-bill sloping line. Good exposure but here is a fair amount of noise in the blacks - did you need to recover them in post? I also find the colours could be more vibrant, they seem a bit muted. Gad this fella came close for you...it is quite a striking duck.

[William Dickson]

Hi Daniel Thanks for that.

I think I have overdone the Detail Extractor on the blacks. I was wanting to get more detail on them, using the plugin, but prob too much, still trying to get used to that plugin on Colour Efex Pro.

Will

[William Dickson]

This is a little more contrast

150291

[Daniel Cadieux]

The added contrast looks a little better, but it is still noisy. It's a very beautiful duck and worth the TLC:S3:

[Gerald Kelberg]

Hey Will,

You really are working hard at those Eiders - guess they will be heading north pretty soon - so keep at it!

You did well to get so close to this guy!

Noise from Detail Extractor was one of the main reasons I stopped using CEP some time back, and only use it very rarely now. I am no expert, but I would be trying to lift the lights and darks separately with Curves and some luminosity masks, and then up the vibrance a touch.

Hope that helps,

Gerald

[Diane Miller]

Very nice!! Noise can be difficult, but I've had good luck with Nik's Dfine before Detail Extractor. Keeping the noise low in raw conversion is the best strategy, if it can be done without sacrificing detail.

[William Dickson]

Thanks for the comments and your time guys. Very much appreciated and I learn from them :)