Here is an example of what I call I call an “indulted” image: an image with obvious flaws but that one cannot delete due to personal reasons.
This one was made with my old Nikkor 80-400VR a nice lens but with several limitations in terms of AF speed and soft results wide open. In other words, not the perfect lens for action and flights but very good on other fields. During two long years I used the 80-400 for birds in flight, my main photography interest, with very poor results but I adquired a lot of experience with that lens and at the end I got almost nice results. This one is an example. With a good technique and observing the flight patterns of this fast collared pratincole (Glareola pratincola) it was possible to capture this guy.
I think that autocritic is a very healthy exercise in a learning process if we want to improve the quality of our work. The positive points on this image are IMO: 1) Light 2) Action 3) Posture 4) BG 5) Very little cropping
The flaws are: 1) Lack of sharpness (the main flaw) 2) There is no catchlight 3) Some noise in the dark areas
IMO an unsharp image is a complete different thing from an out of focus image. In this one, the focus is OK but I was using the lens wide open and at the maximun focal length, the perfect conditions for a soft result with the 80-400 and with most of the zoom lenses. It took a time to realize this problem and I needed more time to learn taht the best soultion to fix the problem is to stop down the lens one or two stops and to avoid focal lengs over 350-380mm. Unfortunately, when I realized that, many, many opportunities were lost. :(
Is this image a keeper? Probably not... OK is not a keeper for sure, due to the flaws it has but I am not able to delete this one from my files. Love the BG, the bird pose, the light, and the lot of fun I had that day (... and a lot of frustration too!) so I indulted this image from the trash bin. This image is not perfect but it has a “soul” for me and that is a good reason to save it.;)
I wonder if I am the only one freak here saving images with obvious flaws just due to emotional or personal reasons and I would love to hear your houghs about this matter! Anyone else do the same kind of “indults”?
BTW, at this size the image may looks sharp due to the fact that I am downsizing and the original file is large, but when viewed at 100% the softness is very obvious.
Juan
Nikon D2X AF Nikkor 80-400 VR at 400mm, f5,6 1/1000s, handheld, VR off, strongly processed and some cloning out at the bottom right angle to delete plants)
It all depends. Is the first image of this species that you have in flight? If so, keep it until you have a better one... that's my policy.
I must be able to do things that aren't typically possible, because I used the Nikon 80-400VR for more than 2 years (exclusively), and made amazingly sharp images of birds in flight. It all boils down to technique when using that lens. I can provide examples ;)
I keep images if they are the only one of a species, or the only in-flight image. With this one you could tone down the whites and if that is something you do, you could add a catchlight at the upper left of the eye, about 10 o clock.
I like this image a lot!! I can't adequately judge sharpness from a .jpg, but it is a cool image. There are so many factors that go into apparent sharpness (resolution, contrast, diffraction, depth of field, lighting) vs resolution only-- that it is sometimes tough to decide if images are adequately sharp. Shooting the same subject under different lighting conditions affects resolution of fine detail, but that doesn't necessarily mean one image is less sharp than another. Then on the other hand, I'll often shoot a high speed burst of images on a subject and find that some are sharper than others.
Indulted images or saved from the trash bin!
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