European Bee Eaters

[Tobie Schalkwyk]

I have not seen any of these bea eaters in the recent thread list so I've decided its time...

Photographed in mid afternoon sun. Minor adjustments & cropping done in LR. I know there's room for improvement (I'm not too happy with the BG), so all comments welcome.

d600, f6.3, 1/320s, ISO 100, 500mm. Sigma 150-500mm. Beanbag support.

[Marina Scarr]

Nice to see 2 bee eaters in one image, Tobie, and it's fun to see one with its back to us with prey in its beak! The background actually works for me. The issues I see with this image are the harsh light and the lack of feather detail. How much of a crop is this? As far as the light, you could do some burning on the birds.

[Tobie Schalkwyk]

Nice to see 2 bee eaters in one image, Tobie, and it's fun to see one with its back to us with prey in its beak! The background actually works for me. The issues I see with this image are the harsh light and the lack of feather detail. How much of a crop is this? As far as the light, you could do some burning on the birds.

Marina, thanks for your reply! Kindly explain 'burning'?

(PS: it's a crop of about 25%, which usually is no problem from this camera).

[Marina Scarr]

The burn tool is a tool which you can use to dark a subject incrementally, a little at a time. However, I find your image overall a little bright especially on the backs of the birds where the light is glaring off of them. I really think that if this original image is sharp, you could make this image look quite a bit better.

You didn't let me know whether this was a large crop?

[Tobie Schalkwyk]

Marina,

I've added the crop info (+/- 25%) just after replying to you - you must have missed it. In the mean time I've gone back to the photo to bring back the highlights a bit (& lifted shadows jut a tad) but the 'glare' on the birds' backs was still there. I then went back and did something which Steve recommended earlier today: I changed the Camera calibration (Profile) to Camera Neutral (it was on Adobe Standard) and that immediately transformed the glares with blue-ish feathers (thanks Steve!). I thus feel that this is a much better pp platform to work from than the first pic:

[Tobie Schalkwyk]

Sharpened version:

[Doug Brown]

Hi Tobie. I love Bee Eaters; gorgeous birds that exhibit really cool behavior. Nice habitat and a decent BG. Sharpness is decent in the bird on the left but not so good on the other bird. I think there are two issues at play here. First, the bird on the right was moving and your SS of 1/320 probably wasn't enough to freeze the action. Second, you were photographing two birds at a very low ISO with your lens wide open. Raising your ISO to 400 or 800 and stopping down would have helped; I never drop below 400 ISO for natural light bird photography because I can always use the extra SS or DOF.

Getting back to the image itself, I would have liked to see good eye contact from both birds (especially the bird with the bug), and I might clone out the twig sticking out of the breast of the bird on the left.

[Tobie Schalkwyk]

Doug, thanks for your reply, it's really appreciated. I agree with you on the out of focus bird on the right. I think it's also partially because I was specifically focussing on the bird on the left. I'm still learning what works best on this particular camera which I've had for only a few months now. In general I prefer ISO 100 for midday sun photo's but in time that might change due to learning experiences from pics like like these - and experimentation. I've gone through a series of photo's staying at a minimum of ISO 400 in midday sun but that didn't always work for me either. So it's 6 of the one, half dozen of the other.

I've got photo's of these birds with eye contact and will place one of them later on after basing my pp on what I've learned from this excercise. I've decided to place this one specifically because it was different - the bird on the left was watching the one on the right, waiting for it to drop its prey. Thus - eye contact was out of the question. Funny that I usually pic up clutter very quickly and I have never seen the twig on the left - thanks for that!

[Doug Brown]

One other thing. Could you please repost the original image? It helps people follow the thread better.

[Tobie Schalkwyk]

One other thing. Could you please repost the original image? It helps people follow the thread better.

Not sure what you're looking for, Doug? All images are present.