American Golden Plover

[gail bisson]

I revisited this image from Nome. I was going to delete it because I had significantly underexposed it but I am getting better at PP and the dynamic range of the 1DX is incredibly forgiving.
Canon 1DX
F 600mm and 1.4X
ISO 800
SS 1/800 f 6.3
Dark day with occasional light showers.
PP: Crop to 65% FF, increase exposure by .75, levels, cloned out 2 grass stalks ( one beneath tail and one to left of bird), DE to black belly at 20% and 4% to rest of bird, USM to JPEG at 35%
Comments and critiques always appreciated and learned from with thanks,
Gail

[Julie Brown]

Hi Gail,
underexposed or not, this is a gorgeous bird! You got a nice head turn and the eye is visible. I like the foreground detail (and water droplets) of that little hillock, and how the bird is separated from the pleasingly colored background. BTW, I just got a RRS tripod and gimbal package, but have not had it out in the field yet. I am renting a 600mm f4L IS II for a workshop in Nebraska at the end of March, so hopefully I will get a chance to see this bird on migration.

[Karl Egressy]

I'm glad that you kept it Gail. It is such a beautiful image. Underexposure was dealt with well in PP, I wouldn't even have guessed.

[Iain Barker]

Gail, There is no sign of noise from fixing the exposure and there is some nice detail in the blacks.
I like everything about the image and can't fault it.

TFS
Iain

[Marina Scarr]

Your PP is so good, I almost feel as though I am sitting right in front of the bird. Well done and super habitat.

[dankearl]

PP looks nice, attractive BG and nice perch.
I might darken the grass in the perch in front of the bird.

[John Robinson]

Looks fine to me Gail
Love the mound with the various lichens etc- tells about the habitat.
JOhnR

[Richard Flack]

Beautiful image Gail. Love the perch

[Daniel Cadieux]

It's a beautiful individual in a very nice setting, not much more you could ask for. Great work on the processing. I just wish the higher part of the oof bush was not there, but all else looks great...I especially like the drops clinging to the grasses.

[Joseph Przybyla]

Beautiful bird nicely shown. Good post processing, my only nit would be the top of the out of focus bush Daniel mentioned. Well done Gail.

[Rob Melone]

Beautiful composition and capture.

[Diane Miller]

Potentially a very nice image. The contrast (especially in the darks) looks awfully harsh to me - almost more than I would expect from looking at the histogram. If I may ask, what was your PP before the Levels step (obviously that was in PS)? What RAW converter? Is that where you increased exposure? Did RAW conversion let you get a little more detail in the darks? (Maybe with a noise penalty.)

I ask because you say you are "getting better at PP" -- maybe this is a chance for another step??

[gail bisson]

Hi Diane,
I used LR4 to convert the RAW file.I increased the exposure there, increased the clarity slider to +20, increased the saturation slider by +6 then sent the file to CS5 and did NR on the BG, levels, Detail Ex as above, then back to LR4 for cataloging and export to my BPN file as JPEG. I then sharpen the JPEG back in CS5. If you have any advice to improve this shot, I would be happy to use it.
I am not sure what you mean by the blacks look harsh? They are not as detailed as I would like, but that is the penalty I paid for being underexposed. I could have increased the exposure to a full stop increase but then the whites would have suffered. Looking forward to your expertise,
Gail

[Bret Goddard]

A beautiful overall even if a bit under, glad you posted it here instead of the trash.

[Jim Crosswell]

Beautiful image Gail! I like the setting, sharpness, composition and water drops on the grass really adds to the image. Great PP as well.

[Barry Ekstrand]

Gail,

Neat Bird and obviously a tough one to expose and process with the dark blacks and bright whites. I am curious about your workflow, why take it back to LR for any further actual processing? I'm not certain it is a big deal, but I would worry about degradation of the image by sharpening and resaving after already converting and saving as a jpeg. Right or wrong, I make all my different sized copies in PS so I'm using the resizing and sharpening from the same almost-final psd.

Barry

[Holger Leyrer]

All is said. Perfect in every way for me.

[Diane Miller]

Hi Diane,
I used LR4 to convert the RAW file.I increased the exposure there, increased the clarity slider to +20, increased the saturation slider by +6 then sent the file to CS5 and did NR on the BG, levels, Detail Ex as above, then back to LR4 for cataloging and export to my BPN file as JPEG. I then sharpen the JPEG back in CS5. If you have any advice to improve this shot, I would be happy to use it.
I am not sure what you mean by the blacks look harsh? They are not as detailed as I would like, but that is the penalty I paid for being underexposed. I could have increased the exposure to a full stop increase but then the whites would have suffered. Looking forward to your expertise,
Gail

I meant the blacks look quite dark, without much detail. But lightening them would bring up noise, especially with initial underexposure.

That's basically my workflow too, except when I want to pull more detail into shadows or highlights (often both) I use the Shadows slider (to the right) and the Highlights (to the left) and then balance those two with Exposure and then some Clarity if it looks too flat (Clarity is midtone contrast). But lightening the darks this way would bring up the same amount of noise as using the Exposure slider, it would just let you balance darks and lights with more control.

I watch the histogram at the two ends, as it is a more accurate indication than a monitor for clipping. But your histogram looks fine at the ends -- the image just seems more contrasty than ideal. Maybe a difference in our monitors, too.

And I also love what Detail Extractor can do to go a little further.

I'll usually go for the tonal detail and then try to deal with the noise in PS.

[gail bisson]

Gail,

Neat Bird and obviously a tough one to expose and process with the dark blacks and bright whites. I am curious about your workflow, why take it back to LR for any further actual processing? I'm not certain it is a big deal, but I would worry about degradation of the image by sharpening and resaving after already converting and saving as a jpeg. Right or wrong, I make all my different sized copies in PS so I'm using the resizing and sharpening from the same almost-final psd.

Barry

Hi Barry,
I only bring it back into LR to catalogue it. I am a huge fan of the LR library. I don't do anything to the TIFF except put it in the library. Instead of converting the TIFF to JPEG in CS5 I just do it in LR4. I don't think it degrades the image at all. Same step, just different "engine".
And to make things even more complicated- I use DPP for all images with ISO greater than 1600. I find that DPP is far superior to any other RAW program at higher ISO's. In my limited experience, I find LR is the same as DPP for lower ISO images although I think Arash and Artie would disagree!
Gail

[Barry Ekstrand]

Thanks Gail,

I appreciate the explanation. I think I'm hanging up on the last step of sharpening in CAn after converting to jpeg in LR (if I got that right from the first description). Again, I'm not sure it matters but I thought the final sharpening was best applied prior to the conversion and saving as jpeg. I'm still in a learning mode so I may have it wrong, and I'm not trying to start another sharpening discussion here either, I'm just thinking all adjustments of any kind are best to do prior to the first convert and save.

[Diane Miller]

A point of interest to me, too. Some comparisons are in order: Flatten, rezize in PS to the final JPEG size, sharpen, then convert to JPEG; or, Just let the LR export module take it from the PS (or adjusted RAW) master file, then do a very careful sharpening on the JPEG, which will involve a re-save. Off to experiment... For the size of JPEGs here I'm not sure the difference would be dramatic. I think I'll try it on slightly larger ones that will fill my screen at full size.

And of course the resizing in PS involves its own sharpening algorithms -- there are several you can choose.

[Ákos Lumnitzer]

Quite pretty as presented. I like the surroundings and placement of the bird.

I suspect even with a near 1 stop underexposure, the 1Dx could do quite well. Out of interest if you could perhaps post a 100% crop of the belly/background areas after you've increased exposure (prior to applying NR) then it could be seen how the noise was generated and to what extent. Thanks. :)