Guillemot

[William Dickson]

Canon 1DX
f/4 500mm
f/6.3
1/1000
ISO 1250

This is another from my trip to the Isle of May at the weekend.

Will

[Steve Kaluski]

Truck loads better Will.

I still would have gone to ISO1600 and perhaps even expanded the DoF. To me the sharpening looks just a tad too much, but at this stage it's 'perceptual' sharpening. I would back off on the LH rock at the back. Hard to tell, but is the tip of the beak sharp??? Just check the Histogram, it might be my eyes, but both Blacks & Whites look clipped?

[William Dickson]

Hi Steve, yes, maybe I should have eased off on the sharpening a tad. Maybe a wee bit of motion blur on the tip of the beak? I have noted the advice re the Blacks and Whites. I did expose for the blacks, for to get more detail. I have attached the original, with no processing.

Thanks again,

Will

[Steve Kaluski]

I did expose for the blacks, for to get more detail.

You need to expose for both Will, detail will come from the mid tone, the finer elements. Personally I would avoid a big crop, or relatively big crops as you are throwing away valuable data. If you bolted on the 1.4 and rotated the lens then you would have achieved the OP format and a far better image, as you would have more IQ to work with.

I have attached the original, with no processing.

This will only illustrate the composition, for a 'fair' assessment you need to Upload the original RAW file to someone. Personally I might have moved it more to the left and higher so the Guillemot can look into the space?????

[John Robinson]

Hi Will
The vertical one looks quite good to me with the tonalm range pretty well covered. One or two local bright highlights on the chest but fixable I would have thought. I always used to find these birds diffiicult in film days but now we have the greater tonal range. If I was doing a sea bird talk it would do for me.
John

[Jonathan Ashton]

Hi Will I like the pose of the guillemot, I would suggest the original post is too large a crop and perhaps over sharpened. Looking at the second image I would have suggested a 4:3 crop or similar just to the right of the whitewash on the middle hump, I sense this would have retained image quality and give the bird somewhere to look into.