Species
Common Name- Superb Fairy Wren(female)
Scientific Name- Malurus cyaneus Date- 22/05/2016 Location- Tuggerah Waste Water, NSW,AU Camera Details
Brand/Model- Canon 7D Mkii
Lens- Canon 600 Mkii +1.4TC Camera Settings
ISO- 200
F-Stop- 5.6
Shutter Speed- 800
Exposure Bias/Metering/Flash- 0/EV/-1 Technique- Tripod Attraction Aides- call playback Post Production-
DPP - Standard + brightness and curves. Crop and export to PS.
PS - Nothing except clone out some cobweb at the bottom left, moderate jpg de-noise(topaz) & resize for web. Notes-
These twitchy birds make it hard work getting everything right(practice, practice, practice…). I did underexpose and fixed a bit in PP. I think the 600 may have saved the day a bit by not having to crop much to fill the frame if it is a passable image.
C&C welcome and appreciated.
Krish: Boy I know what you mean about twitchy, small birds. Surprised that at 1/800 you froze the action as well as you did. Any consideration for using a higher shutter speed? I suspect that would have meant higher ISO ......... yes, it's all a great big balancing act.
The only nit I have about the picture is that the background is a bit too dark for my liking. I feel like I lost the contrast for where the head ends and the background begins.
I haven't even begun to work with flash, so all I can comment on is that the flash fill seems very nice in my eyes.
Everything else is lovely - lots of details, narrow DOF but spot-on focus. Well done!!
Cute little bird in a nice pose. It's much better if you can get the flash off-camera about 15-30 deg. but it will give harsh light without diffusion. You need a very large diffusion screen close to the bird (next to impossible in the field, sometimes works with an attracted setup) or else it won't look great. Flash works best as fill light, not main light, and the darkness of the fine shadow under the branch on the left shows it was main light here. That's why you had to raise exposure -- you had the main light set at -1 (if I'm reading the specs right). For flash as main light you don't want to underexpose.
But you did get a shot that you probably wouldn't have otherwise.
It looks oversharpened, though. I'd have a look at re-doing with less.
I'm not sure why you would use a jpeg de-noise setting? I find Topaz Denoise to be far less desirable at any setting than Nik Dfine, which is free now. Neat Image may be better for some images but is some trouble to use.
Last edited by Diane Miller; 05-25-2016 at 01:11 PM.
Andrew
The settings are all to do with the movement of these birds - not enough time to make too many changes before they disappear out of the frame. Unfortunately this one decided to find a branch in the shade to sit on, hence the dark background. They do not listen when you want them to sit on a particular branch.
My next task is to set up perches and probably a hide of sorts. Not sure how I am going to do that yet as I take most of my photos in public "nature reserves". This one is in a wetland.
Diane
The flash was intended as fill. Not sure if the shadow is a result of the flash or actually the dark background. They will not sit where you want them to, next task to set up perches.
No sharpness added, except for DPP, which is at 3. Any other sharpness that appear present is probably from what software does when going from tiff to jpeg for web. I will check if there is anything in that that may be causing it. The topaz jpeg denoise is a trial. I have yet to get the Nik Dfine.
Thanks
Last edited by Krish Naidoo; 05-25-2016 at 03:49 PM.
The shadow is a classic indicator of flash as your main light (from its hard edge) -- underexposing flash does not make it softer when it is right on-axis. (This shadow shows it is off-axis by the amount of the height of the flash unit.) If it was well off-axis and you had shadows from sun, then underexposing a little as fill light would be good. But if the exposure without the flash is underexposed, and the flash is underexposed, then the subject is underexposed.
Zoom in to 100% or 200% in DPP and see if you get tiny granular squares around edges with your sharpening settings. I do, with even minimal values.... And when I export as a TIFF (at full size) I get even more "sharpening" over which I can't find any control. So I use Lightroom/ACR which gives me much better results.
There is no such thing as sharpening -- there are artifacts that make things look sharper until you look closely. And any artifacts contribute negatively when you add steps such as resizing and exporting for web. Try Adobe Camera Raw for comparison and reach your own conclusions.
Forget Topaz DeNoise. It is junk. Get Nik Dfine. And for the few cases where it doesn't work, Neat Image will, with some work and expense.
Diane
Thanks for the shadows and sharpening tips.
I will try Lightroom for Raw conversion and try Nik Dfine.
Thanks again for your very helpful, informative C&C.
Krish: I want to take back some of my earlier comments about the darkness around the head area. When I first viewed your image, I was on my work computer. Seemed dark. When I got home and looked again, the image was not near as dark! I liked it much better. I almost was going to ask you if you made changes to the original post! But back again in the office .... dark.
So one of my monitors needs an adjustment ...... :)
All the above. I, for one, do not have the patience to catch one of these little birds. So, I really appreciate the hard work you put in this bird. Composition wise, I really like the perch, but wishing for the bird to show its tail. Unfortunately, it doesn't speak human language. Haha.
Andrew
I am trying out some other PP options as you and Diane have suggested. This will probably make it better.
Adhika
You are right about the patience required. There is also some wishful thinking and luck involved, that they will sit still long enough on the right perch.
Thanks again to all for the C&C