Verdin

Canon 7D
Canon EF400mm f/5.6L
1/2000 sec f/5.6 ISO 500 HH
Crop, S/H, Sharpening, cloning of a couple of twigs in CS5
NR in Noiseware Pro

Love the comp here, and the detail, excellent eye contact and head angle, all make this frame very attractive to me!

I have two nits here:
The dual highlight and flash reflection(?) look odd, you could clone out some to make it look natural and attractive,
The noise is a bit on the higher side, unless this is a high crop? It would be really great if you could rework it with lower noise (eg avoiding too much S/H etc.), that would take it over the top!

Ian- Great to see this species! Nice eye contact. Lighting and exposure look good. There is a lot of noise in this image and I have to assume it is coming from a heavy crop. ISO 500 on a 7D and with the use of NR software should produce a pretty clean image. As I think the bird needs some room on top and to the right anyway, a looser crop would address two issues. The detail is a little soft in the image too and a looser crop and some more sharpening may help. Agree that some eye clean-up would be useful. There's a hint of steel-eye from the flash and the flash catchlight.

Cute species with a nice curious pose. Good exposure and colours. IQ is suffering by what looks to be a big crop. The bird is quite tight in the frame, so adding back would take care of both the comp and *possibly* the IQ. Steel eye and double catchlight needs fixing - very easy using the clone tool.

Thanks, everyone. Yes, I do have some room to loosen up the crop a bit and will go back and try that (as well as cleaning up that eye).

These guys are particularly skittish and I'm finding it a real pain to get an image of one that isn't behind a couple of branches :)

All good stuff above. Ian, Can you please post the full frame original capture for us?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Arthur Morris

All good stuff above. Ian, Can you please post the full frame original capture for us?

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I'll try to remember when I get home from work.

Thanks. Seeing it will enable us to comment better on the low image quality issue.

OK, here's the original (sized for BPN). Please have at it :)

Thanks. It was not the crop obviously, the original capture is simply not focused accurately. Please check your EXIF and let us know if you were in One-Shot AF or AI Servo AF. I suspect the former.....

Agree, not the crop. I wonder if the image was underexposed which would have produced the noise when you try to lighten?

John, that may be part of the problem here but the image is simply not focused accurately.

For sure Artie. I was trying to figure out where the noise was coming from. It's there in the repost and when you sharpen the image to compensate for the lack of focus, the noise is accentuated.

Thanks for the comments Artie and John. No, Artie, I was on AI Servo, so that's not it. I'm starting to think I may need to get in and microadjust the lens/camera combination. This focus issue is coming up more often than I think it should. I guess I have my work cut out for me this weekend. And yes, definitely underexposed.

YAW. Maybe you had far distance range set.... If you go to the Bulletin Archives and do a search for "Basic Sharpness Testing" you should be able to find out if the problem is operator error or an equipment problem....

Thanks, Artie ... on my way!

Good plan. Let me know if you have trouble finding it. Make sure you wind up at the old Bulletin Archives and are seeing the tan and orange pages not the black pages...

Found it, Artie! Thanks and I have my weekend work cut out for me. :)

Good luck. I hate to say it but I am betting operator error :) Hope that I am wrong....