storm heron

[Bob Smith]

I
I was out at the Reifel Refuge, a large waterfowl refuge in the Fraser R. delta near me, last week when a storm force SW blow came off the Gulf. The sunset had the clouds of the overcast skies glowing pink. I was standing on a viewing platform shooting snow geese, ducks, and whatever passed by with my 5DMIII with 400mmDO when this fellow started searching around for a sheltered spot to get out of the rising wind. He was standing on a deadhead in the pond in front of me when he suddenly flew over to the water beneath the bushes overhanging the pond immediately below me. Darkness was almost upon us so the Ap setting at 1/500 I had been using anticipating catching a flight image ( with EV1.5) pushed the ISO to 12800. I have been using Aperture for post up to now but having decided to switch to DPP 4 I have just received the new manual on that software by Harash/Morris. I adjusted the noise reduction settings with both Aperture and DPP4 ( using the manual's recommendations) and this DPP 4 image was considerably better than the Aperture result.

[Randy Stout]

Bob:

Although a bit hard to judge in such a small image, the noise certainly doesn't look objectionable with the DPP4 processing. Does look pretty turbulent. Just from a pure compositional stand point, wish the bird was facing us.

Be sure to post your images at 1200 x800 if possible, they display much better, and allow for more meaningful comments.

Cheers

Randy

[arash_hazeghi]

I agree that DPP4 is the best software for processing Canon RAW files. However, this image doesn't work for me, the shooting angle is quite steep while the bird is facing away from us, bird is quite soft too... I would personally delete this frame and try another time when conditions are more favorable

TFS

[Bob Smith]

Apologies for the delayed reply here fellows---I had to go away for a bit. Thank you for your replies. I was having trouble with the sizing of the image for this post Randy but I think I've got it figured out now. Unlike Arash, I really like the positioning and direction of the shot ( and the storm light too ) but of course the softness is an issue so I had been hoping to achieve as much as I could with the sharpening and noise reduction. Unfortunately I was in single point focus and the even greater bad luck was that the positioning of that point was right in the black hole backed by the water between the back of the base of the neck and the wing so I guess that softness was contributed to by incurable focus issues. Strangely enough the image without any PP is so soft that it has almost the appearance of an old painting when printed on soft textured fine art paper and is very pleasing to look at. Still , I was amazed by the degree of improvement I got from DPP 4 and thank you Arash (and Art as well ) for producing such a helpful manual.