Acr / Dmkiii

[Michael Lloyd]

One of the first things that I do when I begin to work on an image is to slide the black point and white point to the edge of clipping. With the DsMKII and DsMKIII and proper exposure I have never seen black points above about 5. A few days ago I shot numerous images of a Green Heron hunting for a snack. I used a 600 f4 / 1.4x TC / 1DsMKIII (normally I use this camera for sports). I shot images of other birds (Least Bittern posted on this forum) with the same setup. The Green Heron images were the only images that required the black point to be set as high as 54 before clipping occurred. Some of you are thinking AHA... over exposed. Not at all. In fact the white point slider was barely touched in every image (+.85 was the highest if I remember right). The histogram lacked data on both ends but was especially lacking on the left. When I followed my "normal" routine and adjusted for clipping and then backed up a tad the image looked "hyper-saturated". Almost cartoonish or painted. Backing the black point slider down to about 50% of the clipping value (25-30) helped the problem some but that's still a very high black point number.

I've fallen into the habit of post processing in ACR by the histogram and following up in CS3 by looking at the image. I suppose I need to change my habits some but this is the first time out of 10's of thousands of images that I've seen this.

Thoughts?

Here's an example (fairly tight crop)

[Robert O'Toole]

One of the first things that I do when I begin to work on an image is to slide the black point and white point to the edge of clipping.

Are we talking about setting the black and white points in ACR or levels in Photoshop?

Robert

[Michael Lloyd]

ACR. I rarely use levels. I have other actions that do more for contrast enhancement than levels does.

[Robert O'Toole]

Sorry I did not give you better answer yesterday, I meant to get back to the thread but I had to step out for a meeting.

I think the problem is the image itself and I would recommend that you do follow your idea in regards changing your workflow and not only relying on only the histogram for changes.

In the Green Heron image above I think the flat gray light was the problem. This lack of contrast and color gave you a very peaky histogram that caused you to make huge changes when setting the white and black points. I have had images exactly like this in the past so I know what you are experiencing and I have ended up not using the images because even with a lot of post processing work the images were still lacking in vibrancy, color and detail.

Hope this advice helps.

Robert

[Michael Lloyd]

Robert,

Thanks for taking the time to respond. I agree with what you are saying. I have spent hours trying to "recover" a decent image and I have not been happy with the results.

I think I will also try to avoid using the DMKIII for birds / wildlife. I know there are plenty of people that successfully use it for wildlife. In fact, I've got quite a few images from it that I am very happy with. However, I also feel that the added pixel density that I would have had if I had used my DsMKIII or DsMKII would have given me a better result in the lighting that was available.

Mike