Puffin and sandeels

[Melvin Grey]

Taken locally on Skomer Island, Here the Puffins are doing well on sandeels, further north in Scotland the sandeels are being hoovered up and made into fertilizer and many Puffin chicks are starving.

Camera: Canon Mk111 with 100-400 IS lens at 400mm, handheld. Exp. 1/640th at f5.6, ISO 800

[Doug Brown]

Excellent photo Melvin! Reminds me of John Isaacs' classic puffin photo. Love the metallic fish; it's quite a mouthful! I would run some NR on the BG, and if you have a little more room at the bottom of the frame, you could avoid having the fishtail touching the edge of the frame.

[Arthur Morris]

Welcome Melvin. I enjoyed my time in Scotland this month. You obviously have a good eye for COMP, and the sandeels are amazing. And I love the BKGR. There are, however, two huge problems with this image.

#1: Not only are the silveriest parts of the sandeels overeposed, a good portion of the white breast is also over-exposed. I check the histogram to be sure and there is a ton of clipping.... Normal for a bird with a white chest and a blue water BKGR in full sun would be at least -1/3 stop, but with the bright refelctions off the sandeels you needed to dial in -1 at least. (Looking at your EXP settings in bright sun show where the problems began. How did you arrive at the EXP???)
There is a chance you could save the whites and with such a spectacular image it would be well oworth your time. You should try re-converting the RAW file darker. What do you use for your RAW conversions?

#2: Some parts of the image look over-sharpened.

[Doug Brown]

I agree with Artie for the most part but on my monitor there's detail in the white feathers. Not so on the reflection from the silver scales.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hi Melvin,
The whites have some detail...but should be a bit more and agree that a bit of canvas on the bottom.....to get the tail of one sandeel would be beneficial. This composition & lookof this is simply awesome!!!.......... so any and all attempts should be made to re-correct this image.

[Melvin Grey]

Welcome Melvin. I enjoyed my time in Scotland this month. You obviously have a good eye for COMP, and the sandeels are amazing. And I love the BKGR. There are, however, two huge problems with this image.

#1: Not only are the silveriest parts of the sandeels overeposed, a good portion of the white breast is also over-exposed. I check the histogram to be sure and there is a ton of clipping.... Normal for a bird with a white chest and a blue water BKGR in full sun would be at least -1/3 stop, but with the bright refelctions off the sandeels you needed to dial in -1 at least. (Looking at your EXP settings in bright sun show where the problems began. How did you arrive at the EXP???)
There is a chance you could save the whites and with such a spectacular image it would be well oworth your time. You should try re-converting the RAW file darker. What do you use for your RAW conversions?

#2: Some parts of the image look over-sharpened.
Thanks for your comments Art. With regard to your remark of 'lack of detail in parts of the white breast' I can only say that there is no clipping on the master file. On viewing my image in the forum, to me it now appears oversharpened so I think problems are occurring in my image reduction and convertion to Jpeg method - please can you advise? The highlights from the silver on the sandeels is another matter as they are very extreme. I will certainly have another go with the RAW conversion (Lightroom) as you suggest. How can you view a histogram from this posted image? Did you notice a lack of sandeels in Scotland, they seem to have to resort to catching pipefish, which aren't such good food value?

[Fabs Forns]

Agree with the prior comments and will add there's some noise in the BG. With the proper workflow, this could really shine!

[Arthur Morris]

YAW Melvin. I simply saved the image, opened it in Photoshop, and opened a Levels Adjustment Layer. There was lots of clipping on the white of the breast... Usually when you make a j-peg the image gets darker... Is there no clipping on the sand eels on the master file?

I create j-pegs in about 3 seconds using an action. You can find the details by clicking here and scrolling down to my post:

http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php?t=839

You might have to tweak a thing or two but it should set you on the right path. I now make them 800 side and less than 10kb.

We saw birds with Sandeels on the Isle of May I think but no pipefish.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Great portrait and the sandeels really make this one. Adding to the other comments, you could use curves to get more details in the blacks and highlights. It's going to be more difficult with the sandeels, though. I'd love to see a repost since the image has so much potential.

[Arthur Morris]

Melvin, Can you post an 800 pixel wide jpeg of the converted RAW image (with no flashing highights anywhere) and let us have a crack at it? It would be a great learning experience for all.

[Melvin Grey]

I have re-worked the RAW file with regard to your comments, including making a seperate conv. for the sandeels and combining the two conv. images, and using a mask and erase tool to eliminate the loss of highlight detail in the eels. Also adding canvas to the bottom of the image and using QM to select Puffin, inverting and using noise reduction (as per your instructions in previous forum, Art!) as recommended by Fabs. Reviewing it on the forum it looks slightly dull compared with previous. This image has not been sharpened.
Comments please.

[Arthur Morris]

Much better but still a few over-exposed pixels on the sandeels. How did you do the conversions? (What program, what method?) Comments on the re-post welcome.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

The repost is a major improvement!

[Melvin Grey]

Art, apart from the cloned out highlights on the bill I can't see any difference between our reposts, sorry but it is probably the difference between our moniters - I certainly can't see any over exposed pixels on my sandeels now. RAW convs. were made using Lightroom with adjustments in 'recovery', for highlights, and 'fill light' for shadow detail. The conv. specifically for the eels was made using maximum 'recovery' setting plus a minor adj. in curves! Incidentally, one thing I forgot to mention before was that the exposure was set manually, metered off sunlit medium grass green hillside and decreased by minus 2/3rds. Thanks for taking so much time and trouble - your comments are really appreciated. It is what makes this a truly great forum and teaching tool.

Melvin

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Melvin, you can see a difference if you compare the eye. Artie seems to have lightened it.

[Doug Brown]

Nice work with both reposts!