I just wanted to get some input on this image. I find that the glare on the wings is a little distracting. My other issue with it is the beak appears sharp and the grey feathers below the neck seem sharp but for some reason the feathers around the eye don't seem that sharp. I know I could crop off the top some more to be better compositionally but I like the perch. Is this a Keeper? In post minor sharpening, exposure adjustment ( I need to work on exposing to the right) and warmed it up a little with a white balance adjustment in LR. taken from blind at feeder. Canon 7D and 100-400mm. Thanks.
It's not easy to assess at this small size, with the head being smaller in a vertical than a horizontal, but my quick answewr would be that it's a keeper until you can do better. I delete a lot of older images as I manage to improve on shots of a subject.
It's a cute pose of a bird that doesn't pose for long. It doesn't look tack sharp, but some of that could be processing. It appears to be somewhat over-sharpened. If it wasn't tack sharp at 100% (1:1) in the RAW converter (assuming it was RAW, since you used LR) then there isn't much to do but work on technique. Just general comments: the contrast seems on the high side -- did you adjust the LR sliders looking at the histogram, or use an Auto adjustment?
And my personal preference would be to crop some from the top unless you are going for a magazine cover. That would also make the bird bigger here, which makes evaluation for comments easier.
There seems to be some sort of Murphy's Law, for me, that a bird's head (face) is never as sharp as it should be, despite sharpness around it.
I think you caught a great pose, the color is very pleasant and the BG is lovely.
Diane,
Yes I did boost the contrast in LR. I will turn it down a bit. I agree I need to work on my technique as well for some reason even though the nuthatch is common I think I only have 1 photo I am ok with. I will make those adjustments in LR and reevaluate the image.
Thanks
-Dave
I think if I were you that I would evaluate it in terms of (or in comparison to) other images you get with the equipment you have. There is some grain and lack of sharpness that both cause some degradation, but that wouldn't show much in a small web image, so the image may be of some use to you.
I delete the really bad stuff, mark some as good, and keep some that fall in between. (They often get deleted later.) The issue here may be equipment and technique more than processing, and this might be a good comparison or benchmark for future improvement.
I don't know the camera well but this seems noisy for ISO 200, but you said you had underexposed it a little. ETTR is the way to go, but you don't want to loose whites. Can be hard with white feathers. The shutter speed looks good but tiny camera or subject movement can cause some softening at even high SSs. The DOF could be a little more, but in soft light that means other compromises... Hard to balance things. Shooting a burst can give one that ts sharper than the others, sometimes.
I think I will end up tossing this one. I actually underexposed by half a stop in fear of blowing the whites. I then adjusted exposure by about + 1 in LR which would explain the grain' Exposing to the right is the thing i am going to focus on next time I can get out. As always thanks for the pointers.
Dave
It certainly looks sharp enough to me. I really wouldn't mind the very slight softness viewed at 100%. I really doubt it would show at normal print sizes with proper sharpening. If you don't want it, you can send it my way. I'm still looking for my first decent nuthatch.
The light was quite harsh (high contrast) and exposing to the right even a bit will clip the highlights. This type lighting makes it virtually impossible to get proper exposure with a bird that has both dark and light feathers; best bet is shooting in soft low contrast light, in which case ETTR works well. In any case, the last thing you want to do, other than have too slow a shutter speed, is underexpose.
As far as being a keeper or not? With 4TB external hard drives going for $160, why not? regards~Bill
My guess is that the bird started to turn his head, the bill has about the same overall sharpness as the eye area-as others have noted, even the slightest movement from the subject or the camera will cause this to happen given the focal length and camera used. I shoot with the 7d and suffer a high failure rate on these types of subjects as well. It's a nice pose with soft background, and I really like your use of opposing curves in the crop of the image-Randall
Nuthatch Keeper?
