bankin american oystercatcher

There was a group of about 70 plus oystercatchers that were fairly inactive, maybe an occasional dominance push off, or a quick chase, but very little fly in's or fly out's... At last, this swell guy obliged and gave me a nice succession of incoming shots... Just a wee bit of feet show and i was happy I didn't have to be disappointed by any bird band bling as there was a fair amount on the group. Nice warm light as this was evening. I'm not sure how to get detail from the white feathers as they are not blown... Any suggestions? Maybe easy peasy for some but I'm a "student" of processing and then some...

D5
850mm
HH

ISO 1000
6.3
1/2000

I was hoping for AMOY flight shots at Nickerson, so I'm a bit envious of this as I had no decent opportunities. The whites are really hot as you note, but I'm
at a loss how to get them back. Since my I suck at processing, I'd just end up tossing this frame. I'll be really interested to see if others have ideas to resurrect
this as it is otherwise a very nice frame with the banking pose and beach background. My other issue is the severely blurred primaries. You had the ISO to get
to to at least 1/3200 which would have helped on this fast flapper.

Pleasing Frame. Sharper wings and more details in white would really help the frame.

You mentioned that whites are not blown. Best place to address the whites is in RAW Conversion.

Not sure which tool you use to process your Image. I use Capture one which has Highlight slider which helps in getting details in the whites.

I would check the RAW image to see what are the values for the whites. I generally have them between 235 - 250

The closer it is to 250 it look like blown out, the closer it is 235 more detail it had.

Hope the above helps.

TFS

love the pose, wish we could see the tail.... the image is a bit soft lacking in critical IQ that one would expect from a D5 at such low ISO. the whites aren't blown but have no detail, the head blacks aren't the good either, the whole bird is soft. You need to delete this file and start from RAW.

TFS

Great pose but the image is a bit soft. You needed to be at 1/3200 I think for this. But I would definitely try some extra sharpening to see if this can be fixed.
So many ways to deal with whites.
#1. Use the highlight slider ++
2. Try selecting the white areas with the selection brush and feather the selection and then try reducing the "brightness".
3. Try luminosity mask (try that Greg Bentz tutorial you sent me a few months ago).
You may need all 3 methods or only 1 or a combo of the above.
Gail
PS Pretty cool that the all these recent posts are from Nickerson!

It looks rather ie to me. Bright WHITEs are best dealt with during the RAW conversion ... As Arash has pointed out many times in defense of his own images, WHITEs in soft light usually show little or no detail.

Assuming Nickerson Beach, I had a flock of more than 200 AMOYs last week in the pre-dawn.

with love, artie