Buff-banded rail Gallirallus philippensis. Apologies for the incorrect spelling in thread title, don't seem to be able to correct it.
More a case of what could have been than a decent photo.
I was waiting for a friend to have her cat attended to at the local vet.
Strolling around the yard trying out a Pentax W80.
Heard the rail before I saw it and then watched it call a dark black chick.
These birds are known locally as "Roadrunners" but bear no resemblence to the American Roadrunner.
Had some basic DSLR gear in ute so strapped a 70-300 onto a body.
A bit of observation revealed the bird had a regular route, coming out of the vegetation onto a rock about 1 meter high.
Normally these birds are only seen at ground level. I really like this pose as it shows up the usually hidden powerful thighs,legs and feet.
Unfortunately the camera I used is old technology and not at its best at ISO 800. Suspect that this particular camera itself is also a lot noisier than others I have of the same model.
Hope to get permission to go back with some more appropriate gear. A photo of mother and chick would be nice but the chick doesn't seem to venture out onto rock.
Pentax *1stDS
Sigma 70-300 AF at 300mm (has macro at 300mm, couple of models of this lens)
ISO 800 , f9, 1/800 AV
Hi Paul I think this is a very cool image. If it were mine I think I would back off the crop to develop some space around the bird and do some noise reduction in the background. I look forward to seeing more of your stuff.
I find most photographers are usually their own worst critics. Way beyond a "decent photo"...really enjoy how the bird engages the viewer. Looks bit to yellow on my monitor but still great.
Thank You
Agree a looser crop would be good. That would mitigate any image quality issues a little, too. I don't know what to expect of that camera and lens so can't comment on what the optimum IQ might be, but I'd say this isn't bad. There is some noise, which may be from underexposure that was brought up in post. Was that the case? Nik's Dfine generally does a very good job on this kind of noise. I wouldn't do any noise reduction or sharpening in LR, other than the default.
It does seem a bit on the warm side -- I'd experiment with the White Balance.
There is always a depth of field issue with a pose like this, but looks like you hit a decent median. That is one time where being farther away will help a little, but of course you have to pay for it with a larger crop. Not much free lunch in this game.
Can you give more details on the processing? Most discussions here hinge as much on processing as on the camera settings.
Hi Paul. All the good advice has been mentioned above. So nothing more to add. I know how jerky and twitchy these guys, so you've done very well. Now that you know there is a rail and chick, maybe you could go back with a bit more preparedness.
Thanks Jack, Steven, Diane and Glennie for the comments and thanks for correcting the title Diane.
The crop has been backed off to a full height vertical crop from the horizontal original.
Colour temperature adjusted to remove yellowish tinge, no adjustment to exposure.
As you suspected Diane I had adjusted exposure in the first post.
Unfortunately I don't have access to noise reduction software but will keep Nik Dfine in mind if funds become available.
Happy to see a correction but now it's too blue. It can take some practice to see colors, but also depends on a well-calibrated and profiled monitor, and the assurance that the computer is actually using the correction. Not a common problem these days, though. And for many laptops, you're just as well not calibrating.
I don't know the bird's color but here's a quick neutralization of the rock, just to try to get closer. I also darkened the rock with a gradient burn -- easily done in LR but if you're going to PS with an image I prefer to wait till then, when it's editable.
Post a JPEG of the uncorrected raw file. Without seeing it I can't say, but Contrast is the last slider I'd ever use. (And Exposure is the first, IF it is needed.) Blacks and Whites will give the same effect, but with control over each end of the histogram separately. Then maybe try one of the Curve presets (linear is the default) -- in LR. Then tweak Shadows and Highlights if needed and then re-tweak the others. It's not as difficult a balancing job as it sounds. If the image shouldn't have and pure black and white, don't go that far with the adjustments -- watch the histogram.
Thanks for the rework and workplan Diane.
Here is the original capture.
Went back there this morning but lighting too intense, bird again using rock, will try again this afternoon.
The exposure looks good. I hadn't noticed the OOF branch in the UL but that area could be neutralized in color to better blend with the area behind it. Not sure what threw the white balance so far off but that's easily fixed in raw. Just adjust to the true color of the bird. It's non-destructive to change it as much as you need. It just comes in as whatever the camera read or had preset. Not all all like exposure.
Was the camera set to a preset like cloudy? That will cause colors like that. I prefer to keep it on Auto or Daylight, if you need consistent color across a bunch of frames in the same light but different compositions. Most of the presets go too far, at least with my Canon bodies. When the camera reads a white balance (color temp) it is only an estimation and will need some adjustment as it will change as the colors in the frame change. That can happen as you zoom in or out on a scene to isolate a smaller range of colors.
Hello Dianne,
I just checked the white balance on that camera and sure enough I had moved it off the daylight setting I normally use.
Had been doing some inrfared photography and had set the white balance to custom.
Its my understanding that settings like white balance, saturation, sharpness, contrast on this camera only affect any JPEG files produced by the camera and have no effect on the RAW files.
The *1stDS can record images in either RAW or JPEG but not both for the same frame. I have it set to RAW. The camera still produce a JPEG image but that is used for the playback display only and is not saved..
I will have to run some tests to confirm this.
The photo of the rail was taken in RAW, opened in LR , sized and saved as JPEG.
I did read somewhere that the camera settings could influence how a Raw file was opened in a RAW processor though.
Will test this too.
No luck with the Rail yesterday afternoon.
Paul.
Test Results.
Looks like I was misinformed at least with this camera.
Took a series of photos at different white balance settings and then another series adjusting saturation, sharpness and contrast individually.
I then developed the RAW files in Pentax Photo Browser 2.0 (Slikypix) , LR and Stepok Raw Developer.
In all cases the results shown on computer screen showed the influence of the camera settings.
So the inappropriately set white balance on the camera was the problem. I need to be more diligent at resetting any changes I make.
Those camera settings affect the image on the back, and should be kept to low contrast so you don't see too many blinkies, which might prevent you from exposing to the right as much as you could.
The in-camera WB will come into LR/ACR initially but it completely malleable with no harm to the image. The other in-camera settings are not used by the raw converter.
Buff-banded rail
