Singin'

[wendell westfall]

D90 70-200VR+2X@400 1/2000 f/5.6 ISO400 0EV monopod

I've been trying to get a good photo of this sparrow over a couple days' visits. It sings in the same area often, but is usually hidden in the bullrushes. I like the singing pose and the bird's ragged tail feathers. The image is cropped 50% and adjusted entirely in LR3.

Wendell

[Roger Clark]

Wendell,

Beautiful image (on my uncalibrated laptop).

Looks like a great subject for an HD video of the bird singing.

Roger

[Joe Brown]

Great capture.

The shot looks a little bright and cool to me. I suspect this shot would benefit from an adjustment of curves.

Joe

[Bill Dix]

Great singing pose, and handsome perch. Nicely placed in the frame. My first reaction, before seeing Joe's comment, was that the bird looked a little warm, if anything. But I went back and compared breast and throat areas to a few of my Song Sparrow images that I thought were reasonably well balanced, and this has pretty much the same coloration. (That's not to say that we're both right, necessarily, but to my eye it looks good.) Well done.

[Roger Clark]

I just calibrated my monitor, The image looks good to me.

Roger

[wendell westfall]

Roger, I've never calibrated a monitor. Is it worth doing for me, an amateur, and if so, would you outline how I should go about it? The info might be helpful for others, as well.

[Roger Clark]

Roger, I've never calibrated a monitor. Is it worth doing for me, an amateur, and if so, would you outline how I should go about it? The info might be helpful for others, as well.

Hi Wendell,

First, I have to say there seems to be tremendous variability in color of different LCD monitors these days; much more so than CRTs. So, depending on your monitor, it could be very close or very far from accurate color. Thus, calibration could be a real necessity.

I just posted some links in the workflow forum
http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php/84347-Color-Management-Tutorial
that should help.

What there doesn't seem to be is a clear description of settings and workflow that I've been able to find online or in a book. I got very frustrated with windows and color management and dumped it (because it wasn't clear to me what it was doing) recently and went to ubuntu linux. There the information is even more ubtuse, but I've been able to work through it.

I'll start a new thread on digital workflow on this sibject and lets see what infor the membership can bring to BPN.

Regarding calibrating a monitor, you need a device that will measure the intensity of different colors on your monitor and use that information to derive what is called an ICC profile. I'm using a Spyder 3 for example. The specifics of what to do after the monitor is calibrated seems complicated with different blogs saying different things, and multiple software packages possibly competing against each other.

Anyway, let's go over to digital workflow...

Roger

[wendell westfall]

Roger: Good of you to respond, and so quickly, too. I will consider your suggestions and do some study on the subject . . . but for now it does seems a bit "much" for my limited computer smarts . . .