Greater Double-collared Sunbird

[Pieter de Waal]

80211

Taken in our garden, not a set up. Cropped from horisontal, background blur and removed oof flower from LLC.

50D/EF500f4/f8@1/800/ISO400/-0.33EC

[Rene Quenneville]

Great picture Pieter. I love the eye contact. The background complements well the image.

I would clone the dry part toutching the bill. It would make the bird stand out even more.

[Randy Stout]

Pieter:

Esp. nice for not being a setup. Nice angle of bird in frame, sharp.

The image seems a bit bright overall for my tastes, and in particular the lighter areas of the perch. Might try some gentle burning in of the brighter areas of the perch, or just try lowering the overall luminosity by 1/3 stop, or both.

Hope to see more of this handsome fellow.

Cheers

Randy

[Arthur Morris]

I love the image and the bird. I would leave the thing the bird is picking at. Randy is on the right track but he did not follow the right road to the end :) The image as presented shows considerable clipping especially in the throat (that looks detail-less and aroused my suspicions). Check your optimized file and if it shows clipping this one is good enough to start over making sure to Recover any lost highlights.

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Pieter, lovely subject to have as a garden visitor, and just love the colours. I like the comp.

[Gerrie van Vuuren]

Like the pose, eye, detail, colours & BG. Well done!

[Pieter de Waal]

Thanks all for the comments and feedback.

Arthur went back to the RAW file which shows clipping. Used the recovery slide as much as possible then masked the bright area and used levels to recover the rest of the image, have posted the image below for comment . Randy I have also done some burning on the bright areas of the perch. Thank you both for your suggestions.80269

[Pieter de Waal]

Apologies not sure what happened the original post popped out ( still working on my forum skills) here is the revised image.

80270

[Arthur Morris]

Pieter, Please check the optimized file for clipping by holding down the ALT key and the Highlight Slider in Levels at the same time. If there is clipping, do the same thing to the file right after you convert it. How are you converting???

Here is what am seeing with the image in this Pane--there is actually a bit more clipping than in the original post. If you answer my questions each time we can get to the bottom of this :)

[Arthur Morris]

ps: An image without any clipping would show all black....

[Pieter de Waal]

Arthur, thanks for your patience. I am converting using Camera Raw 5.0.

I now see my mistake - by not using Alt Key/ Levels slider I have completely missed the large amount of clipping in the posted images. The camera image without adjustments, right after conversion shows some clipping but not as much as in my posts. Just a reminder not to cut corners.:confused:

By using the recovery slider and converting again the clipping is reduced. I will reprocess in the morning taking care with the two ends of the Histogram and see if I can get a better image.

Thanks again Maestro much appreciated.:)

[Arthur Morris]

YAW. Furthermore, it would seem that you have not enabled the Highlight (and Shadow) clipping warnings in ACR else you would have been aware of the clipping during the conversion process.... The are the two little square boxes in the corners above all of the sliders. You click on them to toggle them on and off. Over-exposed shows as RED, under as deep BLUE.

#1: There are several excellent tutorials on Saving the Whites, Reds, and Highlights in the Educational Resources Forum here.
#2: To avoid having to search around I recommend strongly that you get a copy of our Digital Basics File (https://store.birdsasart.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=252), a PDF that we send all over the world by e-mail :)

[Lorant Voros]

Very nice bird and I love the pose. You can probably fix everthing in the RAw file in ACR as Artie suggested. If you are new to Photoshop the Digital Basics will bring you up to level. Thanks for sharing this and looking forward to more.

[Pieter de Waal]

80322

Arthur here is the image reprocessed, no clipping. Birds with a metallic sheen on the feathers seem to be very tricky to expose correctly and light conditions seem critical to avoid clipped highlights when capturing the image.

Learnt a great deal here and thanks for the tip on Clipping Warnings will use it with future conversions. Interesting observation, after processing the image without clipped highlights in the tiff file I then saved for web and the jpeg showed a bunch of clipped highlights, had to go back and redo. Will order a copy of Digital Basics.

Lorant thanks for your feedback and advice.

[Arthur Morris]

Pieter,

re:

Arthur here is the image reprocessed, no clipping.

Hooray;; you did it!

Birds with a metallic sheen on the feathers seem to be very tricky to expose correctly

The key word there is "seem." Just try to get some data in the fifth histogram box and avoid lots of flashing highlights (a few can always be recovered) and you are good to go. With digital it is that simple 99% of the time....

and light conditions seem critical to avoid clipped highlights when capturing the image.

Nope again; the light is the light. Check the histogram and the light does not matte for exposure. It affects how the image looks, but never the exposure if you learn the simple concepts that I mention above and write about constantly.

Learnt a great deal here

That is always the plan. Many months ago this was a constant theme but most of the folks who have stuck around have it down pat now. They got tired of me checking their histograms :)

and thanks for the tip on Clipping Warnings will use it with future conversions.

It is a basic....

Interesting observation, after processing the image without clipped highlights in the tiff file I then saved for web and the jpeg showed a bunch of clipped highlights, had to go back and redo.

JPEGs are always more contrasty so you need to be extra careful.

Will order a copy of Digital Basics.

Best plan.

After that, ABP II (https://store.birdsasart.com/shop/category.aspx?catid=32) :)

Thanks for being a good student.


Lorant thanks for your feedback and advice.[/QUOTE]