I took this photo of a Carolina Chickadee that landed on my back deck railing. I have bird feeders out. This picture has been cropped and I adjusted the contrast, brightness, sharpness, etc. in Photoshop Elements 12. I took several shots of the Chickadee and, while you can see the snowflake stuck in it's feathers, this is the only one that showed detail of the snowflake. I had no idea I had even captured the snowflake in detail until I was reviewing my photos. While the picture is unique, I feel the quality is poor. I shot it handheld with a Canon 7D and 400mm L Prime lens, ISO 3200, 1/400th. Not sure of the aperture, but can check when I get home. It really has several strikes against it for it to have turned out as good as it did. I do not have a lot of post-editing knowledge, so I'm not sure if or how much the quality of the photo can be improved. I have added a watermark because I posted the photo on facebook and it was way more popular than I anticipated, and several people decided to re-post it in different social medias without giving me credit, so I was advised to add a watermark in an area that it would be hard to crop out or remove. A lot of people are telling me I should do something with the picture because it is so unique, but I hesitate because of the quality. Suggestions, recommendations, and opinions are greatly appreciated. I have decreased the size of the photo as well, so the quality is a little better than what it appears on here.
What an amazing capture, but it is unfortunately quite soft. I'm amazed the detail shows in the snowflake.
The old 7D has some image quality issues and ISO 3200, even on the new one, is going to give low resolution of detail. The accuracy of autofocus could also be an issue -- hard to tell. And handholding 400mm at 1/400 can definitely limit sharpness. Even with the best stabilization and technique, I like at least twice the shutter speed as the focal length. And if the aperture was wide open, that might have also been a factor, both in where the plane of focus was and in lens sharpness at that aperture. Some lenses are sharp wide open and some suffer a little until you stop down a little.
Shooting in low light is always tricky. The sweet spot of ISO, aperture and shutter speed for max sharpness shrinks a lot and can be less than sweet.
Is this a crop? That will only magnify image quality problems. It's very crowded at the bottom -- a little more room there would be nice.
Was it a raw capture? Is the original raw, with no auto adjustments, this soft? (Of course there are some adjustments in the initial interpretation of any raw converter.)
I don't see any evidence that you caused quality issues with noise reduction or sharpening. There are sharpening plugins, but they have limitations and I doubt they would do much here, but worth a try. Does Elements have Smart Sharpen (use the Lens Blur setting, not the Gaussian Blur default, which is the same as Unsharp Mask). I like Nik's Sharpener. Best used on the re-sized JPEG, not the master file. Nik's Detail Extractor (in Color Efex Pro) might bring out a little more detail. But you're limited by the quality of the initial capture.
There is a lot of noise, including color noise, in the background, indicating that you didn't lose detail by noise reduction.
Last edited by Diane Miller; 03-03-2015 at 12:36 PM.
Thank you Diane! I do shoot in raw and it is cropped. I really was not expecting to capture anything like this, or else I would have had the camera on a tripod. I'll mark that as a lesson learned. Elements does have a Smart Sharpen or Auto Sharpen setting. I am so very limited in my knowledge of post-editing, I do not understand what a plug-in is. I am including two more shots in the series that I took that are not as cropped. You can see the snowflake, but no detail. Basically, I think I have a really unique image, that may have some potential but, because I don't know anything about post-editing, is rendered useless.
I don't think it's any lack of knowledge about editing that limits the picture. (You can always go back to the original raw file and get help from someone who knows more and has more sophisticated software.)
The softness is most likely due to a combination of too high an ISO, too slow a shutter speed, and possibly less than optimal focus. (Which 400 lens is it? Does it have stabilization?) Softness in the lens may also be a factor. It may not perform as well near the close-focus end, where you may have been, as farther away. If you will be shooting birds like this it would pay to experiment with that. (Shoot a printed page taped to a wall, on a tripod, in full sun with a fast shutter and low ISO, to learn the limits of the lens.)
The first of your two full-frame shots looks sharper. Murphy strikes again, and often. When hand-holding, I'll usually shoot a burst, in AI Servo mode, and often one will be sharper than the others.
Flash can also help a close-up shot in low light be a little sharper, but it can easily be overdone to look artificial. Another learning curve.
But it is still a very sweet and unique image. You might be able to sharpen it a little, and you can fix the noise in the BG. Hang out here and learn what you can about shooting and processing. It's a process, but so worth it.
A plug-in is a program that runs from within PS or Elements that does various effects on an image. Look up the Nik Suite (now owned by Google so I'm not sure how they're naming it).
Thanks so much Diane! The lens I use is the Canon 400mm L Prime f/5.6 non-IS, and I had to step back a few feet in order to get it to focus. I will definitely do some reading on the forums here to see what I can learn. A wealth of information is here! I have so many people telling me that I "need to do something" with the picture, but honestly do not want this particular photo to represent my work, because I do feel that it is so noisy and soft. I wanted to get a professional's opinion. I greatly appreciate your time and knowledge.
What a great capture, the snow flake steals the show Lisa. I love photographing Chickadee's, they can have the most interesting expressions. This little guy would make for a great Christmas card. I'm sure the image can be edited to improve some detail and remove even more noise. Like Diane mentioned, 3200 is not so good on the old 7D. I used that camera for years and tried to stay at or below ISO 800. And with the new 7D, I try to avoid anything over 1600.
I'll have a look at it when I'm at home in-front of my desktop monitors. Some images are worth a little extra work. I would also like to see a sliver more below the Chickadee, did you crop out the bottom? Just a little extra snow would be nice to my eyes.
Here's an edit to give you an idea of how you can improve on this image. Everyone has their own personal way of post-processing, and there's really no right or wrong. Just give it a try and see what you get.
It's always good to get things right in-camera and save yourself time in front of the computer.
Good work, Moe! With a telephoto lens even close to wide open (I'm guessing it was, as Warren surmised, from your other settings) the depth of field is about the size of that snowflake -- literally! And luckily, that's where the focus landed.
Add back some snow and you have a good image. Sometimes the moment captured can weigh more than technical quality.
Wow! Moe, that looks so much better. As I said before, I am just so limited in my post-editing skills. I did work on it a little and re-cropped it. This is what I came up with. It still doesn't look as good as yours. What else can I do. I can re-crop with more area below.
I'd try just a squeak more added to the bottom and a little off the left. If you have more on the left, you could give the bird a little more room to look into. I'd also remove about half the empty space above the head, but leave it in the master file -- you never know when there will be some use to add text there -- a card or the like.
You could try a very, very careful (slight) sharpening of the JPEG.
This is a good time to tackle some learning about processing -- it's half the game. There are online tutorials for Elements. I think the Lynda.com videos have a good reputation.
This is getting really good!! So much improved over the original!
I could go with a squeak more room on the left -- it's always tricky to allow space for a subject to look into (and even more to move into, if it's moving). Here, the eye is just a little left of center. I'd center it or even place it a tiny bit right of center.
A good example of why not to crop the master file, or only minimally as necessary to remove distracting elements that can't be cloned out.
You might consider cloning out the white dot to the left. It's probably a snowflake in midair but only reads as a lone spot. The one on the beak is OK as it makes sense as a tiny snowflake.
Last edited by Diane Miller; 03-05-2015 at 06:44 PM.
Carolina Chickadee with a snowflake
