Short-eared owl
Hi,
Here is the picture of a Short-eared owl taken not far from Copenhagen a week ago. It looked at me, and flew away seconds later.
It seems unusually sharp, compared to what I'm used to, and I really like these eyes <3 The background is horrible, though.
Canon 60D
Tamron 70-300mm stabilized, handheld
300mm - f/6.3 - 1/1000s - auto ISO500 - Manual mode
Cropped (I still don't know how to show it properly ^^)
What do you think of that?
A very nice find!! Using 300mm on a full frame will generally not get you very close to a bird, but the look of this one conveys that it is about to bug out, so "small in the frame" works for me here. I like that the bird is off center to the right, with the perch balancing the composition to the left.
The color of the owl matches the perch very nicely, and the light is lovely. I wonder if some red is creeping into the background, though. Maybe worth a look.
The BG might have been a little more out of focus if you were wide open -- or were you? -- I don't know the lens. But that might compromise the sharpness a little. Many zoom lenses are a little sharper stopped down a little. The main issue with the BG is bokeh, which is not how softly focused things are, but the quality of unfocused objects. That's not something you control when shooting -- it's unfortunately something you buy, and it isn't cheap.
If you could have gotten closer to the bird (or had a longer lens) the BG would have been more out of focus, which would have helped, but in this case it obviously wasn't going to wait for you to come closer. (Depth of field is less as the relative distance from you to the subject becomes smaller, when the distance from the subject to the background remains the same.)
A good way to express the crop is simply to multiply the horizontal times vertical pixels, and divide that by the same number for an uncropped frame. Multiply by 100 and express it not as a "% crop" (which is ambiguous) but as the % of the full frame.
Hope to see more from you!
Love the pose and the perch and how the bird is really focused on the viewer! I played with the jpg a little to see what might be done with the BG by blurring more and desaturating it some to bring the owl out a little more. I like the balance of the tree branch with the owl further out since you could not get very close. Not sure if it improves it that much.
Hi Samuel! I love SE Owls! Great Find! I like what Warren has done with the blur, yet I do like the color/contrast/detail of the Owl on your OP. Since the perch is large and heavily weighted on the LHS, perhaps a small crop on that side would help? Stunning pose...truly shows the owl's beauty!
www.mibirdingnetwork.com .... A place for bird and nature lovers in the Great Lakes area.
Thanks for your answers, as always there's a lot to think about :)
I wasn't wide open, I could have gone down to f/5.6, but I like not to be at the highest aperture, for sharpness issues (as you point it out).Originally Posted by Diane Miller
Does it depend on the lens, or on the background? (I'm not sure about what you mean by "not cheap", is it litteral?)
With this crop, I keep approximately 50% of the pixels.
Warren, I like what you did to the background, but I don't like how the perch becomes blurred (I guess that can be corrected by selecting the area more carefully, right?). How did you do that, with Photoshop?
I will try to work a bit more on this one, I'll keep you updated.
Thanks!
Yes, done in PS CC and I should have used the pen tool to outline the perch. I selected it with the focus selection and then didn't refine it enough to make sure some of those branches were excluded from the blur so you could get much more precise with the selection by spending a little more time on it. Looking at it now I would not have brought up the highlights as much as I did to bring the owl up a bit, I think your level is better.
Samuel, good bokeh is primarily a characteristic of expensive prime lenses. (Thus my statement that you buy it!) You don't have a quantity of bokeh, as with analogy with the amount of soft focus -- you gave good or bad bokeh. It is the smooth or rough quality of certain out of focus areas, most notably spectral highlights. An internet search will turn up good information and LOT of misuse of the term to mean soft focus due to depth of field. A recent article in a major photography magazine used the term correctly in some paragraphs and incorrectly in others. Sigh....
Warren, do you really mean the Pen tool? It is primarily for drawing a Path for hard-edged geometric objects and relies on Bezier curve handles which drive me crazy. The Quick Selection tool is often adequate, and Topaz ReMask is very sophisticated when you need better selection. I haven't tried the new Focus Select but it is probably very good.
I watched a video on the pen tool and how to curve it around difficult shapes which was pretty amazing. Typically I first try the Focus Area in Selection and refine from there but I hurried through this one and didn't unselect certain areas.
Warren, my hat's off to anyone who can use the Pen tool!
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