Double Crested Cormorant portrait - full breeding plumage

[Bob Serling]

I took this shot of the DCC in full breeding plumage this past weekend in La Jolla, California. There were 3 other photographers present and all shutters were firing at full speed when it stretched its pouch for over a minute, showing the robin's egg blue of the inside of its mouth that only occurs during breeding season.

1D Mark IV, 300mm f/2.8, 1/4000 f/5.6, ISO 800, hand held

I'd love to hear your comments and suggestions.

[David Salem]

What a great pose and a terrific look at this guy. Love the array colors in this and the blue BG sets it off perfectly. Very cool Bob. The only issue is its a bit soft and has allot of noise in it. Resharpen and add NR to the BG and you will have a real winner!

[Bob Serling]

Hi Dave - Thanks for the comments! I'm not sure what happened here. The native pic looks sharp and in focus on my screen. But when I uploaded it, it seems to have blown it up much larger and made it fuzzy. If a moderator has a suggestion for correcting my technical ineptitude, I'd appreciate it!

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Bob, your image as presented is within the spec 1109 x 900. The system should only display what you have asked it to upload, so cant explain your dilemma. What is the size of your saved image that you would like to post?

[Bob Serling]

Here's the image before I saved it with BPN sizing. I'm sure the IQ was diminished from tight cropping, but the clarity of this smaller size is much better.

[Bret Goddard]

Excellent, congrats too.

[Diane Miller]

Great detail shot and color, but it looks like the IQ has taken a hit from a large crop. If there are not other distracting elements in the frame, allowing more room might be something to consider.

[Martin Dunn]

After the first couple of posts about IQ and noise I waited for your re-post before commenting Bob.
The image is very striking and grabs the attention but even at the smaller size there are still issues with softness and noise.

[Bob Serling]

Thanks everyone for your comments and suggestions. I agree that it's still a bit soft. Guess I'll go in and try to add some sharpening as the only sharpening I used was the output sharpening from LR.

[Steve Kaluski]

Guess I'll go in and try to add some sharpening as the only sharpening I used was the output sharpening from LR.

Bob, you always need to add/apply sharpening at the FINAL output size, irrespective of what you may or may not have applied earlier to the RAW/TIFF, however the amount will be far less.

[Diane Miller]

It isn't clear to me whether the output sharpening from LR is added before or after the resizing step. There are 3 choices for Amount. If I use the Medium setting then I can improve the sharpness by doing a very careful Smart Sharpen (at 0.1 radius) on the JPEG. But if I use the High setting it looks basically like the one I sharpened after exporting, and I saved the step of re-saving a JPEG, which can't be good for quality.