Sanderling

[Maureen Allen]

Early morning at the beach

Nikon D300
200-400mm f/4 +1.4x @ 550mm
ISO 400
f/8
1/800

[Jeff Dyck]

Maureen your exposure and composition look very good and I really like the look of water in the background, but the IQ seems to be low (heavily cropped?) and there is a lot of noise in the background.

Here is a "quick and dirty" trip through some noise reduction software (there are still a few artifacts, but it is hard at this small size) with a bit of sharpening for good measure and a bump of the midtone portion of the curve to brighten things a bit.

[Maureen Allen]

Thanks Jeff. This is not a large crop (perhaps 70% of original.) Your repost looks much better. I didn't use any noise reduction and obviously should have.

[Maureen Allen]

In looking back at the original, I realize now that this is about a 50% crop. I think something awful happened in processing the image. I need to retrace my steps and figure this out.

[John Chardine]

I think you are right Maureen. Your techs look good although as you know, Sanderlings move, and fast (!), so 1/800s may not be enough. Your exposure is more than one stop over the sunny-16 rule for a brightly lit, light-toned subject so it was not as if you underexposed the image either. Can you check the size of the resized jpeg that you posted. If it is slightly over the BPN limit of 200kb the BPN server can mangle the image.

[Lance Peters]

I think you are right Maureen. Your techs look good although as you know, Sanderlings move, and fast (!), so 1/800s may not be enough. Your exposure is more than one stop over the sunny-16 rule for a brightly lit, light-toned subject so it was not as if you underexposed the image either. Can you check the size of the resized jpeg that you posted. If it is slightly over the BPN limit of 200kb the BPN server can mangle the image.

I would say John is correct - The image is only 90KB - The original was probably over 200KB and the server has as John put it Mangled it.

Hope you reupload - are you using Photoshop?? If so I can send you a action for saving to web that will make your life somewhat easier in this regard.

[Ulli Hoeger]

Something went wrong during compression and/or upload as already estabilshed by other commentors.
BG "noise" looks like compression artefacts.

Please try a repost to do your image justice.

Ulli

[Maureen Allen]

I'm going to try again. Here is the image without any post processing (cropped and saved at 72 dpi.) On the initial post, I cloned out the bright spot on the bill and a few of little spots on the sand.

[Julie Kenward]

It's a very cute image, Maureen. You've got a good motion pose and a very strong HA. Nice catch light in the eye as well. I'd clean up the white bit in the sand (by the bird's foot) and maybe try to lighten/lessen the dark ridge in the sand right below his beak. That should leave the viewer with no distractions.

[Maureen Allen]

Thanks, Julie. Your comments are most appreciated.

And thanks to all who pointed out the problem with the upload. Next time I post I'll definitely check the file size first :o