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This tiny blue jewel of the jungle was fishing from a low perch over water when we came across him on a flat bottom boat.
Blue Eared Kingfisher, North Borneo, East Malaysia
http://www.pbase.com/tsechien/image/...9/original.jpg
D200, AFS 600mm f4 on a Wimberley II Head / G1325 from a boat.
1/160s f/5.6 at 600.0mm ISO 400
Image slightly cropped and sharpened via USM in CS2
All C&C welcome
chien
Looks AMAZING, maybe just a bit to oversaturated to me, but besides that, Outstanding, Composition, BG, light, pose. Very, very nice.
Cool pose, details and BG. It does look oversaturated and the BG is a bit noisy. You could try some S/H to lighten the areas that are not sunlit and lighten the eye a bit.
For those like me that have seen a good number of tropical birds, we know that some bird species have very saturated colors and this one could be one of those.
About the BG, is very normal when it comes to green BG's
To me this image makes justice to the bird, great job Tsechien.
I agree with the oversaturation comments. Nice pose.
Fantastic bird - very similar to our Azure Kingfisher. The colours look spot on to me.
What a great pose. I love kingfishers and this one is fantastic!
re. saturation - I think it is definitely oversaturated. I would imagine the overall image could eb desaturated by a few points and then the red channel could be brought down an additional few. Because the breast is also going to be included in the red channel I would then select just the feet and de-saturate a bit more...
Looks very similar to our Malachite Kingfisher, colours look fine on my monitor.
I've never seen one of these beauties so I can't comment on the saturation of the bird. There is a pronounced halo around the bird's tail feathers, lower wing, and the bottom of the perch. Thanks for posting!
Tropical bird or not, this is definitely way over-saturated. Love the curious head turn, the sharpness, and the BKGR. Lightening the iris would likely be a big improvement.
Thank you all for the valuable feedback.
The saturation was not tweaked in the post processing, I think it might be the direct sunlight hitting semi reflective feathers (?)...could be wrong. The background was all natural and untouched.
Doug - you are right about the halo on the lower part of the bird. Definitely an artifact from the USM applied in CS2. Gotta watch out for stuff like that in the future. Most of the time it ain't that obvious on a small laptop screen.
chien
Hi Tschien, With some digital cameras, various colors come out of the camera over-saturated. And this is even more true when making images in what we call great light. In addition, and I should have pointed this out originally, I believe that your image is too contrasty.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tsechien
In many cases it is necessary to desaturate some or all of the colors to make an image look natural. And even images created in glorious light can look "natural." Your image as presented above looks garish.
Thanks for clarifying that, Artie. I have edited the pic to tone the saturation levels on the reds, yellows and blues down a bit and am reposting this one below.
http://www.pbase.com/tsechien/image/...0/original.jpg
chien
Chien and Artie, I think the repost is too subdued. To my eye, on my monitor, and from knowledge of the similar Azure Kingfisher, the first image looks more like that described for the Blue-eared Kingfisher in Field Guide to the Birds of Borneo, Sumatra, Java and Bali: "Small bright blue-backed kingfisher. Back darker metallic blue than Common Kingfisher, underparts brighter orange-red; blue ear coverts distinctive. Iris - brown; bill - blackish; feet - red". The colours of these birds really are over the top. http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...cons/icon7.gif
Hi Chien, I think that you may have overdone it... Something about 1/2-way between the two would be perfect. The iris still needs to be lightened a bit.
I applied some S/H on the bird, NR on the BG and decreased the saturation 10 points and removed that white patch on the perch. There is still a slight sharpening halo around the bill.
Hi Simon, I agree. Our posts crossed in cyberspace. Rest assured, however, that the original post IS oversaturated. The screen capture here is the proof: the blues of the head, the red legs, and the orange breast all show as overeposed and detail-less... Again, something between the two would probably be best. Plus a bit lighter on the pupils.
ps: Excellent re-post by Axel.
First oversaturated, then undersaturated, and Axel repost almost there, just a tiny bit under for the blues, of course in my very own eyes and monitor. Great Image !!
