Pine Grosbeak

[Paul Kammen]

A pine grosbeak
1/1000 sec; f. 6.3; ISO 250; 800mm

[David Cowling]

I like the pose, head angle and colours. I'ts unfortunate that to my eyes the bird is not as sharp as it could be. Some of the highlights in the background are a bit distracting and could be cloned out.

[Isaac Grant]

Hi Paul. Please remember to list the camera and lens used so we know more about the shot.

The species is great. Seeing an adult male is always a treat and they are typically greatly outnumbered by females and young males. Your shot is being held back by poor image quality. Not sure if something happened with the upload or what? What are the steps you take to upload to the site? The habitat in this one is cluttered and too close to the bird so it is causing some busy and not pretty bokeh. In addition you have a yellow cast to the shot.

[Arthur Morris]

Yes to a great bird but the image is quite funky, aka, very poor IQ ... How did the RAW look???

with love, artie

[Paul Kammen]

Yes to a great bird but the image is quite funky, aka, very poor IQ ... How did the RAW look???

with love, artie

Hi Artie, could have been a processing issue. Here is another, I think this is a bit more crisp. I think I was just happy to see the bird, but I probably should have moved the focusing point on my camera up so the center was on the eyes, not feathers right?

This is a Canon 7DII, 800MM lens combo. 1/1000; f6.3, ISO 250.

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[Paul Kammen]

Here was another shot...same settings just at f 5.6

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[Isaac Grant]

Paul the second picture still has very poor image quality. The 3rd one is a step in the right direction with better fine feather details and does not have a strong color cast. But it is very noisy and still not razor sharp. If you scroll about 10 posts down I posted a female Pine Grosbeak. That is the kind of image quality and fine feather details you should be aiming for. Keep in mind that mine was shot with a 46MP Nikon D850. Also the kind of perch and clean background.

If you want to see some fantastic Pine Grosbeak shots posted by fellow Mod Daniel Cadieux using similar Canon gear, see the following links

http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php/146818-Pine-Grosbeak-in-Sugartime-Crabapple?highlight=pine+grosbeak
http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php/147629-Pine-Grosbeak?highlight=pine+grosbeak
http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php/146994-Pine-Grosbeak-Surrounded-by-Orange?highlight=pine+grosbeak

[Paul Kammen]

Thanks, I think the issue was I needed to move the focus center point to the eye; I was getting sharper feathers but struggling with the eye on this bird, yet it did a fine job with the femaile, and other birds seemed to come out much sharper. For instance, I like how this blue jay turned out...same area as the grosbeak, same camera settings. I wonder what went wrong with the grosbeak?

My process is work through RAW, adjust shadows, exposure, go to PS, use NIK filters for layers, highlight the bird using color contrast and detail extractor, inverse for another layer so all is highlighted but the bird, run noise reduction with define, do another sharpen layer if eneded. Maybe I'm doing something wrong?

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