Male Harrier

[Bonnie Block]

http://upload.pbase.com/image/121636641/original.jpg

Male Harrier from Whidbey Island, Wa. Very rainy- low light day.

Canon 7D 500/4 IS
1/500s f/5.6 at 700.0mm iso1000

[Dave Blinder]

Nice eye contact and comp Bonnie. Interesting perch too. The bird has a bit of a blue cast on him.

[Steve Maxson]

This is striking, Bonnie. Love the mood, the look-back pose, the comp, the diagonal lichen-covered perch, the background - everything! :)

[arash_hazeghi]

This is a very sweet image, it shows the environment and the perch is also very nice. My guess is you ran too much NR here as some of the fine feather details have been smoothed out and it has an overall muted feel which lack enough punch. I would reprocess this with no NR on the bird (just run NR on BG) contrast and saturation boost to enhance the dull light. I am sure tyou can take this image to the top, just my 2 cents.

Thanks for sharing and you did very well here.

[Bonnie Block]

Nice eye contact and comp Bonnie. Interesting perch too. The bird has a bit of a blue cast on him.
Dave, I think you are right on--I changed the wb just a bit
http://www.pbase.com/herderdog/image/121636898/original.jpg

[Bonnie Block]

This is a very sweet image, it shows the environment and the perch is also very nice. My guess is you ran too much NR here as some of the fine feather details have been smoothed out and it has an overall muted feel which lack enough punch. I would reprocess this with no NR on the bird (just run NR on BG) contrast and saturation boost to enhance the dull light. I am sure tyou can take this image to the top, just my 2 cents.

Thanks for sharing and you did very well here.
Thanks, Arash:)
This is a very difficult image for me. There is not much detail in the feathers--even in the RAW image.
NR has been run on the bg--but only one light pass on the bird itself. I am finding the 7D files to be tough to work when shot at high ISO and low light--the noise is very hard to control.
Its a toughy--is it ok to put the original file in here for you guys to play with?

[arash_hazeghi]

Thanks, Arash:)
This is a very difficult image for me. There is not much detail in the feathers--even in the RAW image.
NR has been run on the bg--but only one light pass on the bird itself. I am finding the 7D files to be tough to work when shot at high ISO and low light--the noise is very hard to control.
Its a toughy--is it ok to put the original file in here for you guys to play with?


Hey Bonnie, if you have the CR2 file and can post it somewhere I will gladly try my tricks on it, from what I see you can salvage more out of this nice capture.

[Steve Large]

Bonnie,
I like the light in this image and the composition. Not too many males up here mostly females and immature birds. You did well to catch the grey ghost in such a lovely pose.

Steve

[Markus Jais]

Beautiful shot. I like the soft light and the composition of this image. The vegetation in front is a bonus here.

Markus

[arash_hazeghi]

http://www.stanford.edu/%7Eahazeghi/Photos/examples/bonnie.jpg

This is what I came to,

I corrected the WB in Canon DPP taking away the cool cast due to shade.
I adjusted levels in PS, masked the BG and ran one pass of NR, then I cropped down-sampled to 1024 pixels and used smart sharpen on the bird and then selectively sharpened the head. Noise was not bad at all and cleaned up easily. the head and chest did not come out as sharp as I had hoped because in the original focus is slightly off (tail is in sharp focus instead of head). I see that you had put the AF point right on the neck area but the camera was in spot AF mode, this area was relatively low contrast so correct focus was not achieved.
With the 7D, when you select spot AF mode, a smaller portion of the AF sensor is used and if there is not enough contrast in that area AF will give you a false lock. Use this mode only if the AF point is centered on the eye, if you are not sure always use the regular AF mode to increase the chances of the sensor area landing on a contrasty feature.

Hope this helps

[arash_hazeghi]

http://www.stanford.edu/%7Eahazeghi/Photos/examples/afspot.jpg


This illustrates what I explained above. If you had used regular AF mode the head and eye were much sharper :)

[Axel Hildebrandt]

I like the composition, pose, setting and interesting discussion above. The higher color temperature really helps, maybe something between your and Arash's version.

[Bonnie Block]

With the 7D, when you select spot AF mode, a smaller portion of the AF sensor is used and if there is not enough contrast in that area AF will give you a false lock. Use this mode only if the AF point is centered on the eye, if you are not sure always use the regular AF mode to increase the chances of the sensor area landing on a contrasty feature.

Hope this helps
Yes indeed, it helps!
Thanks, Arash!
I like what you have done--your version is a bit more saturated than the original scene--but that is just personal taste. The bg and bird look great.
Your comment on the AF is most helpful!!! It should help me alot!! Especially on these no-light days we are having.
Thanks, again.

[arash_hazeghi]

I am glad you liked it Bonnie, I didn't know what the BG colors were like in the original scene so I just went by the harrier (gray and muted brown), I will send you the TIFF file layer so you can desat the BG to your liking.

Best

[Bonnie Block]

I am glad you liked it Bonnie, I didn't know what the BG colors were like in the original scene so I just went by the harrier (gray and muted brown), I will send you the TIFF file layer so you can desat the BG to your liking.

Best
Thanks, Arash!
I have another image I will post tonight---we'll see how it looks! :)