Banking Juvenile Bearded Vulture

[Loukie Viljoen]

At long last this one looked into the lens.


Camera Model: Canon EOS 40D
Date/Time: 2009:06:19 08:38:47
Shutter speed: 1/1600 sec
Aperture: 8
Exposure mode: Av
Exposure compensation: +1/3
Metering mode: Evaluative
Drive mode: Continuous
ISO: 640
Lens: EF300mm f/2.8L IS USM +1.4x
Focal length: 420mm
Image size: 3888 x 2592
Image quality: Raw
White balance: Cloudy

[David Fletcher]

Very well done Loukie! Lovely details, angle and enough bg detail retained to add interest. Good head angle too. Looks like a good trip to GC. TFS

[Bill Foxworthy]

Beautiful bird, great detail in the black wings and super clarity and HA. Love the banking pose and super capture. Well done, I love it.

[Stu Bowie]

Great banking angle Loukie, with great eye contact. I like the space he has to fly into, and lovely colours in the BG. I would maybe run another round of USM on him. Well captured.

[Loukie Viljoen]

Stuart this is with USM does not make much of a difference IMO, any other views

[Stu Bowie]

Loukie, I honestly think it does, so well done.

[Joerg Rockenberger]

Beautiful pose and background. I also thought that it could use a bit more sharpening and prefer now the repost. Congrats. JR

[Gerrie van Vuuren]

Prefer the repost for IQ. Like the angle of flight, eye contact, full spread of wings & feather detail. Well done Loukie!

[David Fletcher]

Loukie. Not sure if this is over done, but it it one heck of a shot and did three rounds of 50%, 0.3 & 4 on luminosity, with a polish at 10%, 20 & 4. bird sharpened only. Cheers. (did it earlier, but had a major distraction mid reply, ... family thing, :o, so had to finish off early). Hope don't mind.

[Ákos Lumnitzer]

Dave's post in pane #9 takes this to new heights. I love the image itself Loukie. Great pose, BG and sharpness.

[Joe Senzatimore]

A wonderful image made even better in the second re-post.

[Joerg Rockenberger]

David's repost is indeed amazing. Can you elaborate on the sharpening procedure you used? JR

[Loukie Viljoen]

David it looks, as my wife says "awesome"thanks, I think I must send all the photos to you before posting them , thank you for taking the trouble. I think all on site would like it if you describe your P Shop technique, please, Regards Loukie

[Ákos Lumnitzer]

Loukie, I read David's method somewhere, probably in the Wildlife forum. Sounds good, maybe they could put it in the Educational Resources forum for all to learn from. :) Aye Dave?

[David Fletcher]

Loukie, I read David's method somewhere, probably in the Wildlife forum. Sounds good, maybe they could put it in the Educational Resources forum for all to learn from. :) Aye Dave?

Thank you Akos, and Loukie. Peter Kes has info and intends I think to put it on for useful tips. Basically, although we recognize the three stages of sharpening, (capture through to output), I also feel each subject and the subject matter within, influences the treatment too: (just as you would treat skin tones differently from detail in a landscape).

So... here goes,

1. First thing I did was a selection on the bg using magic wand tool, tolerance set to 30. Ensure all bg covered.

2. > Select & > inverse.

3. > Select> Modify>contract… by 1px.. (No chances of halo’s then).

4. > Layer> New layer via copy. > Set the blending mode from Normal to Luminosity: (found r/h side where layers are displayed. Hit arrows by Normal and Luminosity is at bottom.).

5. >Filter and USM and set it at 50%, 0.3 or 0.2 & 4 or your preferred settings. Do three sweeps.

6. >flatten: (not always nec' to flatten here, just usually do as don't want to over sharpen).

7. >go to Filter >usm and “polish” sharpen: (polish is a phrase used). Set at 10% , 20 & 4. Yep 20. To see effect set the radius at 20 and then grab the % / amount slider and move it up and down. You will see what I am on about). In essence, it also has a subtle effect on contrast and depth of color.

8. Sometimes this isn’t even enough, just as it’s easy to over sharpen. This image took a bit more, so I did the magic wand tool again, made a selection on bg, inversed and contracted by 1px then went to Smart Sharpen with settings at 100% & 1.0, lens blur: (or preferred settings). Took it easy and probably could have been harder.

Important point re last step. NOT all images need it. Usually I do the NEW LAYER via copy so that if it does look too hard a sharpen, I can reduce opacity on this till it looks about right.

Whilst we all recognize sharpening is relative to output destination, the subject also influences what I do, and I need to be flexible. Generally though, for web, the above works most times, but I do play with the amounts quite a bit when needed.

[Loukie Viljoen]

Thank you so much David from myself and any other photographer that may use it, super, I will definitely try it, we are all grateful.

[Harshad Barve]

I am very late here , amazing capture , David's repost took it to new heights
Another vote for David's Tech in ER
Harshad

[Ákos Lumnitzer]

Dave
Thank you so much mate. Appreciate that you took the time to explain. I'll ask one of the moderators if this could be copied to Educational Resources.