Sunrise Perch

[David Roach]

EOS R EF 100-400 2xtcII f11 1/800 ISO 2500

[Isaac Grant]

Nice to get this guy perched up against a nice background. Something is very wrong with the processing on this image that caused the colors to be off and poor image quality. Maybe you can detail what you did or show a jpeg of the RAW file so we can see what went wrong. To start with you should only be processing and posting a photo that has a tack sharp RAW file. If the RAW is not tack sharp than the file is a delete. Hard to tell on this one as the whole thing is just off.

[David Roach]

Thanks for the feedback Isaac. Perhaps the original was not sharp as this is the old 100-400 and older 2xtcII. It is wide open for this glass at f11 and in my experience the TC needs to be stopped down to get good sharpness. The processing was minimal with sharpness at 2 in DPP and unsharp mask after reducing size for internet set at 110% and .3 pixels in PS. I have no previous experience with this lens combo as it could not be AFed on my old rigs. I have a previous post and other images with this combo stopped down that are sharp. I must have missed the boat here. As always, thanks for the feedback.

[David Roach]

This is the TIF out of DPP. In PS with original post ,I reduced contrast on BG to lighten shadow areas and adjusted shadow/highlight and and a slight contrast boost to bird.

[Isaac Grant]

The RAW of this image is sooooooo much better than the original post. As I suspected, your processing was off. The original shows pretty good exposure, nice and natural contrast and much better colors. Here is a quick redo where I did the following:

Selected the bird (not perfectly) and saved my selection. I name it bird so I know what the selection is when I need to pull it up again.
I increased the saturation of the bird +5 in hue/saturation
I ran a Viveza layer and increased the warmth +2
I ran a Detail extractor/tonal contrast layer at 25% opacity
I ran some auto tone
I selected just the whites of the leg and toned them down a bit on a layer at 14% opacity using the burn tool
Then I inversed my selection and on the background did the following:
In selective color I selcted the neutrals and decreased the blacks -5. Did the same for the blacks in the blacks as well. Then selected the yellows and increased the saturation of the yellows+5
Reduced the contrast -5
Lowered exposure a bit but can't remember how much.
Then ran NR on the bird and background separately
Smart sharpened at .5 and 100

The head on your raw is not tack sharp but it is still OK. I did not take the time to make this perfect, but only to get you close to what a Tri-colored Heron should look like. Reality is that the background that you shot is not ideal. You could spend the time and dodge the darker areas at a low opacity to take some of the emphasis away from them, but I do not mind them too much. Careful attention should be paid to producing images with spot on colors with soft feather details and natural looking surroundings. Let me know if you need anything or if some of what I said did not make sense.

[David Roach]

Thanks so much Isaac for your help on this one. Being partially colorblind may be a part of my problem. Yours and even the non PS processed version looks better in hindsight. Much to learn on post processing. Also glad to hear Focus was not that far off as to my eye it looked good enough. The AF was centered on the neck below the head but I should have stopped down to f16 as the TC is much sharper that way. Got to get used to shooting this combo with AF as it is fun to walk around with a light 200-800 rig.

[Dorian Anderson]

Good looking bird and shot. BG isn't perfect but I think it holds up pretty well, particularly with the crisper subject in Isaac's repost. Nice look at that red eye as well!

[David Salem]

Isaacs repost definitely looks better as it was way oversaturated but it looks like the image is somehow a little bit crunchy from the beginning. Maybe too big of a crop? Keep them coming

[David Roach]

Same bird, same distance, same crop factor and even same AF mode and point on bird (right below the face on the neck as this beauty was looking all around).
On this one I stopped down to f14, but should have been all the way to one stop (f16) from wide open (f11) with this old slow glass combo. This is the original push/pull 100-400 with version 2 of 2xtc. Not the fastest or sharpest combo.
While EOS R will AF with this combo it requires stopping down to get decently sharp and detailed images.
I tried minimal processing to not mess up this post. NI applied to BG only. I believe this would be closer to correct sharpness and details at f16. At 50 mps the crop factor was probably not the problem.
Any and all thoughts and learnings welcome. Does it still look just as wonky?

[Isaac Grant]

This one is better than the other but your selection is all off and the bird has an odd halo around the whole thing. Colors are still washed out. But getting closer...

[Arthur Morris]

Isaac's repost is best by far. Avoid f/16 for images like this or you will bring up too much background detail.

with love, artie