Actually I guess it's just a Mourning Dove. It seemed quite relaxed while staring down the barrel of my lens. It was coming to feed at the local soup kitchen.
Canon 5D3, 600mm II, ISO 1600, 1/320 at f/11. It landed on the deck railing but I liked the pose so I cropped to a portrait. It's only 18% of the full frame. It was foggy so there was very little color but I thought the feather detail came out nicely.
Basic adjustments in LR5, into CS6 for a subtle sharpening on the bird (Focus Magic) and NR on the BG (Nik Dfine). Cloned out a diffuse brighter area on the left border.
Last edited by Diane Miller; 09-26-2014 at 10:38 PM.
I agree completely with your assessment of this image. The IQ is what really stands out. Even more impressive considering the large crop.
Excellent techs used and perfect F stop. Comp is nice as is but I could see a version with a bit more on the left,
Gail
Jackie, I just do the Auto setting with Nik Dfine. I've tried Manual but not with very good results. I probably need to find some instructions! But auto works very well on almost every image, and I rarely have to mask out the subject. I rarely bother with an image that wasn't sharp and low-noise to start with, and I use it before I do other processing that might bring out noise further, such as Nik CEP's Detail Extractor. That way, it's looking at a fairly "pure" result of the sensor noise, where I think it can do a better job.
If it doesn't work well on the occasional image where processing has brought out extra noise, I'll try Neat Image and if that isn't good, I'll try Topaz DeNoise. (I always evaluate the results at 100%.) If it's a difficult case, I'll usually choose to live with the noise rather than soften the image.
Ruffled Dove
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