Nice catch! I saw one today while getting shots of a pair of Osprey but he wouldn't come out in the open! I like the HT, it appears the sharpest focus is on the wing, still a very nice shot!
I think you have several crop options here, if the IQ will hold up. A little off the bottom and right could work.
Did you do a slight sharpening on the JPEG? That will often add a good punch.
I don't see it as a flaw, but I will often add some color to a gray area like the one you have at the top edge. Easy to do painting a quick mask with a very soft brush and making a Curves or Levels adjustment layer and tweaking the color channels -- or a Color Balance layer is maybe easier. Then tweak the mask edges by painting with black or white brushes if it doesn't match well.
I don't think I could do better, as this is very nice! But if you want to email me (link on my web site) I'll give you directions to upload it to my dropbox.
Here are my adjustments -- not a significant improvement over yours. The bird is very small in the frame, without much interest in the BG close to it, so I cropped to a square. That’s not everyone’s favorite -- maker’s choice. My reasoning was that there wasn’t any balancing elements close enough to the bird, but I do like the brighter area in the LR of your crop.
Something is wrong with the pixel dimensions, though, showing as 3960 x 2640 on both files. The 5D3 should give you 5760 x 3840. Are you set to sRAW? You want the full size for best quality. (That won’t change magnification.)
Viewing at 100% (1:1) it’s softer than you could ideally get from that camera and lens. The exposure is good -- I just brought the Shadows slider to +70 to bring out more detail in the face. Brought the Temp up to 6626 and Tint to +47, but I don't know the bird so your colors may be more accurate. It just felt like there was a slight cyan cast, which I addressed. Clarity to +45 gave some punch that partially compensated for the softness.
I exported from LR with the BPN settings of 1200 x 1000 with file size limited to 400K checked. Sharpen for Screen, amount Standard. Then I opened that JPEG in PS and did a Smart Sharpen (don’t know if you have that in Elements) with radius 0.1 px and Amount 250. You could export from LR with the sharpness set to High for a little extra punch, but it will be a small difference.
The other one you put in the dropbox is also very small in the frame and a little underexposed. I brought exposure up to +1, Highlights full down (to tame the brighter areas of the branches) and Shadows full up. The focus was on the tail and the very shallow DOF left the rest of the bird too out of focus to do anything with.
If there is any way to get closer to the subjects, that will greatly improve image quality. (I know – that’s really easy to say!!) Try to set the aperture at around f/11-13 for a little more depth of field. Choose one focus point and place it on the head. If there is any chance of camera-to-subject distance changing, by even a millimeter, use AI Servo.
It’s a very small sweet spot, but you have the camera and lens to get great shots.
Did you think the original was good as far as focus and IQ, or is it still to small in the frame to get more detail in the camera. I am working on getting the single focus on the eye most of the times, but still don't understand how you and others do that and yet the whole bird is sharp, am I missing something on that issue? Thanks again for your help, oh and I usually always shoot Mraw, is that good? Should I change the aspect ratio in the camera? Thanks Dian e for your time, very gracious.
The original is a lot smaller in the frame than optimal. Sometimes you can crop that much, if the original is tack sharp. I posted an osprey in Avian yesterday that was about 26% of the full frame, if I recall. It was with the 7D2, but same principle applies -- to be able to crop that much and get a sharp image involves some luck of hitting the focus just right and having not even a 1 or 2 pixel blur from movement.
By setting mRAW you are sacrificing pixels. If you shoot in "regular" RAW you have more pixels in the same "crop" of the image, which gives you more leeway to crop after the fact. Getting more pixels on the subject is why we buy those big, expensive lenses. mRAW doesn't give you added magnification, it throws away pixels that the sensor captured by interpolating down.
Having the focus point on the head and having the rest of the bird sharp involves the secret of having the other important parts of the bird in the plane of focus. Depth of field increases as the subject is farther away, so I can usually get away with wide open with a bird in flight, when I'll set f/13 or so with the same lens when shooting small birds up close.
Looking back at my re-post, it has that over-sharpened look. There is no substitute for having the original large in the frame (lots of pixels on the subject) and tack sharp. Adding some subtle sharpening to the downsized JPEG will compensate for the slight softness that results from downsizing it, but can't really make up for an original that is less than sharp.
Indigo Bunting
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