Here's another one. Birds are in and out of the light. I tried pushing the ISO to 800 and once again the light has forced my slow SS. Isaac has mentioned about trying to use f8, and perhaps I should have here to get a little more DoF.
I have blown the tail and reflection of the tail to the point of no recovery. Now that I see it posted, I think a bit of CW rotation would help.
In ACR - decreased expoure by 1 1/4 stop and moved highlights slider -100. Added vibrance. No HSL panel
In PSCS6 - Curves layer adjustment to BG to darken. Vibrance and HSL adjustment layers. Some eye work. Cloned out a little of the bigger bits of feather on top of the water. NR on BG. Cropped. Smart sharpened for web posting.
Canon 5D2
Manual Exposure
Sigma 150-600 @ 350mm. (I could have gone a lot bigger here!)
ISO 800 (Happy with the noise level)
1/250 @ f6.3
Tripod
You're right about a little more rotation. Good you have the crop overlay turned on -- that's some help.
From the crop view, it looks like you may have gone too far with ETTR. Did you have blinkies? But the white areas are small so may not have been easily noticed.
Do you have the correction for chromatic aberration checked? It looks like some around the tail reflection. It commonly occurs around bright areas.
On a tripod I would definitely have gone with more focal length here. Getting the most pixels on the subject is very important to IQ.
I would select the bird (brushing on the desired area with the quick mask) and try to get more contrast in the body with a Curves adjustment. In a case like this you want a slightly soft-edged selection that doesn't slop out into the BG -- that will give more dimension to the bird. Then modify the mask with the brush as needed after the adjustment is made.
Thank you Diane! I spent way too much time on this image to try and make it right. That's the first problem.
I didn't notice the "blinkies". I didn't see the "blinkies". I wear glasses and place them beside me when I shoot. Because I don't see much when I don't wear them, I sometimes misplace where I put my glasses, so by the time I find my glasses and put them on to check the blinkies, the subject has got bored and moved off. My glasses are a pain in the neck! I did read somewhere, that small amount of blinkies would probably be OK in post.
I didn't even see the chromatic aberration! And I had my glasses on. I looked at it again in PS and tried to rectify, to no avail. I think, in fact, it just got bigger. I might do a littler HS layer adjustment over the top!
For CA, go back to the raw file and in the Lens Corrections panel (6th one over) go to the Color tab and check Remove CA. I think that's the same in my CC version of ACR and yours. Not always perfect but usually very good.
Thank you Diane. I found the Lens Correction. I ticked the Remove CA and I think it made a slight improvement. I have also set the "Enable Lens Profile Corrections" (in the same panel) to a Sigma 150-500mm f5-6.3. Which is not my lens, but as close to it as I could find. Is this something I should be doing? Do I need to do this everytime I open a raw file?
Most of the lens corrections are not needed for most images, so I prefer to only do themn as needed. But I do have an import preset that checks CA correction for every image, as it does no harm and may do good. I don't know if ACR / Bridge has a similar import preset option.
I'm surprised that lens isn't included. Do you have the latest version of ACR? (Go to its Help menu to see.)
BTW, I just posted a tutorial on basic color management. Hope I didn't miss something -- just threw it together. See my tutorials link below my signature. Lemme know if it doesn't make sense.
Dark Day at the Pond
