Common Seals

[William Dickson]

Canon 1DX
f/4 500mm with 1.4
f/11
1/800
ISO 1600

Another frame from my time with the seals on Sunday. This is all new to me, especially getting five subjects this size in the one frame :S3: Again, this one is nearly full frame, and cropped for comp. One thing I have discovered is, that's it not as easy as I thought it would be, photographing larger subjects than birds.

Will

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Will - This is a very nice grouping and you did well with the dof to get them all sharp. Good balance of rock and water for me too. I think you can probably bring out a bit more detail. Overall you have done well with the seals it seems.

TFS,
Rachel

[haseeb badar]

Hi Will -- lovely scene and a couple of seals on the lhs looks so relaxed and as result nicely complementing the scene as well. Colours look good to me as well and framing works fine . nicely done. TFS !

[Jonathan Ashton]

I like the shot Will, nice expressions. I get the impression there is a slight cast, I think I would warm it up just a little.

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Will, a nice croup of seals and I like the framing too. I think the DoF appears OK, but it's all about subject distance, i.e. 50m I might have gone to f/5.6 with the added DoF. I might move the Tint to a Minus a +1 the Temp, plus add a luminosity layer if inclined. Will, 1DX - 1/800, not good, think about the one moving into the water, really 1/2500.

TFS
Steve

[William Dickson]

Thanks for that, much appreciated. Steve, thanks for the email, its looking good :S3:

Will

[Glenn Pure]

This looks pretty good to me Will. Nice to see you moving into something a little different too as you seem to have nailed the birds really well. I like the mix of poses in this but glad it's not me sliding over those rocks! The seal about to go in is a nice lifter for this shot. Tone and colour look pretty good although Steve has a keener eye and has made some suggestions. I do wonder if a touch more detail can be extracted though? What software are you processing your RAW in? If DPP, it may be worth turning on Digital Lens Optimiser as it may improve the extraction of detail assuming this can't be sorted with a touch more output sharpening.

[William Dickson]

Thanks Glenn. I was using DPP for a while, but I have reverted back to Adobe. I seem to be able to handle it more easily. With you mentioning Digital Lens Optimiser, I may give it a go.

Will

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Will a lovely gathering of the seals , the setting, crop and colors are looking quite good to me .

As in the previous post i am missing the fine details in the fur , where have you hidden them :w3.
I would expect more deeper 3/4 tones , looking at the sunlit scene . Did you lighten the darks and 3/4 tones ? If so i might reverse by x % . Just my take .

The DLO of DPP is pretty much useless for the prime lenses ( if one can trust Arash/ Artie ) , as far as i know it is more for the cheap glass and the zoom lenses ? If the raw is not sharp ...DLO will not help

TFS Andreas

[Glenn Pure]

The DLO of DPP is pretty much useless for the prime lenses ( if one can trust Arash/ Artie ) , as far as i know it is more for the cheap glass and the zoom lenses ? If the raw is not sharp ...DLO will not help

I don't have an expensive canon prime so can't comment and defer to those more experienced. Still might be worth a try if only to satisfy yourself about whether it's worth the trouble or not. One thing I will note though is that with a 1.4x, I expect DLO to be more likely to have an effect as it will degrade the optical quality somewhat. More importantly, it's not just the 'glass' that DLO works on. It also reduces blur introduced by the anti-aliasing filter on the camera's sensor. So it will have an effect regardless of how expensive and perfect the 'glass' is - just not sure how big that effect will be for you. One other thing, Will. I understand that DLO can now be made to work in camera on the 1DX mark II. I don't know the details but that might be worth investigating too if you do find it improves things. Finally, a note of caution: DLO will increase the amount of noise a little so does not come without cost.