Belted Kingfisher

[Allen Sparks]

Canon 7D, Canon 400mm DO plus 1.4x II TC, monopod
ISO 800, f8, 1/400s

I find Belted Kingfishers very elusive subjects and most good shots I see are from set ups. This was not a set up but a tree in a pond that I staked out for a long time while a family of kingfishers worked for fish. I am wondering how effective this shot is as the BG is a sunlit reflection of the far bank but the bird was in shade. any comments appreciated.

[John Chardine]

Hi Allen- I think the image has potential but needs some processing adjustment (get to that later). I really like the perch, pose and head angle and the fish adds a lot. The BG is excellent but you mention the problem in relation to the dark tonality of the bird. I would recommend lightening the by dodging, Shadows and Highlights or other technique. The other issue is the big blue colour cast on the bird. See this thread where I go through a technique to diagnose and fix colour casts using LAB colour:

http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php/70663-Just-a-portrait-Improvements

(panels 10, 14, and 15).

Here the neck whites in LAB are running A= -2, B= -14. The B channel runs from yellow tones on the + side and blue tones on the - side of zero, hence the -14.

I had a go at correcting the colour but found it very tough because the bird is in the shade. You would probably do better from the original RAW image and to use Fill light to lighten the bird before you do the colour correction. I hope this is making sense but if not, ask away!

[Allen Sparks]

Thanks John. It will take some time for me to work through the steps you laid out in the link but will be a good learning exercise for me. Thanks for pointing me to the earlier discussion that addressed this.

[Svante Larsson]

Agree with John about the potential of the image. I think it will be well worth the effort to lighten the bird and fixing the colorcast.

[gail bisson]

Would fill flash have helped this picture? Why or why not? ETL!!:bg3:

[Kerry Perkins]

Allen, agree with comments and suggestions above. Your scenario (sunlit bg and subject in shade) is the perfect one for using flash. Gail, absolutely right on in your question, as flash would have made a huge difference for this shot. I'm guessing that you used auto white balance, as the blue cast is very characteristic of that mode. This is very common and quite frustrating, as the 18% gray that the camera wants to balance to ends up looking blue most of the time, and in this case there is plenty of that gray in your bird. Go figure, but I never use AWB and strongly urge people to learn how to use manual settings for this. Try shooting for a day with your white balance set at 5200K (you can do it on your 7D). Assuming you shoot RAW, you have nothing to lose as you can change it in post. It would be tempting to use "shade" as a setting, but then the camera goes way too far in the other direction and over-corrects to orange. Maybe it's a Canon thing, I don't know, but both my 50D and 7D behave this way.

As for flash, the pop-up flash on your camera would have made a big improvement to the lighting differential in this shot and an external flash with a diffuser would have been even better. I would also suggest selecting the bird and perch (or the background might be easier using "color range"), putting them on a separate layer, and using a levels or curves adjustment on the bg only to bring it down.

Nice capture!

[Stuart Hill]

Had a quick go. Basically using contrast masks to lighten parts of the image (no need for complicated masks this way:w3). A very minor vinette to focus on the bird. Should look really good from the original raw.

I like the way the fish seems to be looking at the camera!

regards.
Stu.

[Troy Lim]

The repost is so much better. The focus was on the perch by tne feet.
Worth spending a bit more time on it.

[John Chardine]

Nice repost Stuart. Could you enlighten on "contrast masks". TIA.

[Stuart Hill]

Basically you use the tones in the image as a mask. Imagine the image as is, but the channels (RGB) are mono. You then, in PS, command click one of the channels which makes this now a selection.

So you can then use this for anything. Selected sharpening, lightening, color corrections, increasing contrast. The beauty is its a self feathering mask so you can not see where its been used like you would if you just painted a correction on. Another tip using these masks, you can put the mask in a group and then add another mask to the group so you can then isolate the areas your changes happen.

I'm sure I'm not explaining this very well. If anybody wants me to send a PS action that creates Light, Mids, Darks and everything inbetween just PM me.

If you haven't tried it before just try spend 5 mins reading this link.

http://www.goodlight.us/writing/luminositymasks/luminositymasks-1.html

regards.
Stu.