i had a great weekend with the birds this week. Weather conditions weren't that good with quite poor light and I have to contend with massive glare of the surrounding water and mud flats which made it very difficult to expose for. Whether this is the right way, but I decided to use around +2ev to bring out the subject and over expose the water. Its made for a tough time deciding how best to process the image. I brought out the details using Colour Efex Pro 4 ( detail Extractor ) Comments are greatly appreciated on how to improve this.
Canon 7D, 500mm + 1.4, f5.6, 1/1000, +2ev, ISO1000 - DPP and Photoshop CC
I think your basic strategy is sound to use sig. +ev to compensate for the bright background and more properly expose the bird. Would also be a good time to shoot manually, if the overall illumination level was fairly constant. Just expose correctly for the bird and let the bg fall where it may.
I do see quite a bit of purple aberration in the water from the processing/compression. There are some processing halos around, esp. noticeable around the head and neck.
Thanks Randy and good to know the info. I also see the halo's and this must be down to sloppy post processing. Quite annoyed with myself... I'l go back and take another look. In the case of this image - the original was hugely contrasty so the contrast has been reduced etc after i've processed it so the halo I think is the brush from brushing back the sharpening on the bird.
I now see the purple abberation which look awful - wish I'd seen that before I posted it.
Simon a great result. Purely a personal viewpoint I would process in ACR and CS6, I use Topaz Denoise on the background and sometimes lightly on the subject, I sharpen for web using Philip Perold technique. Many will disagree but in my hands I get less noise than using alternative ways including DPP - believe me I have tried and tried!
Common Snipe
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