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Thread: Great Horned Owl in the backyard

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    Default Great Horned Owl in the backyard

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    This Great Horned Owl spent about an hour in the backyard of our townhouse. I had no idea these birds were that big. I would guess this on was 20" to 24" tall. Photo is a jpg direct from the camera with minor general sharpening and exposure. JPG Noise choices in camera were better than I could manage with the raw file in LR4.2
    1Dx, 600mm, 1/640, f/4.0, ISO6400, EV 0 (no post NR)
    Last edited by Blake Cook; 09-08-2012 at 12:00 PM.

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    Avian Moderator Randy Stout's Avatar
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    Blake:

    Pretty good jpeg noise control at that ISO. You have retained pretty good detail in the plumage despite the NR>
    Interesting that you didn't need any exposure compensation with this bright background. Which metering pattern were you using?

    The OOF leaves in the foreground are a bit distracting, but considering the shooting situation, I think you did well.

    Cheers

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    Thanks Randy. Spot metering. The NR was in camera (Normal) The camera seems to make some pretty good choices in terms of balancing NR without losing too much detail. I added a bit of sharpening in post, no NR at all. I don't shoot static subjects much and really need to improve in that area to eliminate shake etc. This should have been sharper.


    Can photos this size for screen be sharpened more?

    I'll post a couple more, one at ISO32k
    Last edited by Blake Cook; 09-08-2012 at 02:01 PM.

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    Avian Moderator Randy Stout's Avatar
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    Blake:

    You certainly can try and sharpen it a bit more. The question is how much detail was lost from the jpeg noise reduction, and can't be easily sharpened. Give it a go and repost your result, and perhaps also post the raw version without NR so we can see what you had to work with.

    Cheers

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    Default additional sharpening

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    Increase sharpening from 25 to 50 in LR4.2. I'll post a jpg from the raw

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    It's hard to compare when the images aren't side by side, but I believe the repost is a bit better. Certainly a challenging situation. With a 1Dx and a 600, I would try to "thread the needle" and come up wtih a tight shot that eliminated the bright background spots and the green leaves in front of the body, maybe just try to get the head and the wonderful gaze. Also the missing ear up top is problematic. What an odd situation...to have a gho too close! Hope he visits you again and that you get some more tries with this beauty.

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    Default Raw>jpg

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    Hmm.. it seems I was thinking of one of the other photos in terms of noise in raw. 6400 looks ok it was an ISO32k file that the camera did a better job of NR.

    Reducing to 800 pixels removed most of the noise.

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