I photographed this female Purple Martin last week in the last few moments before the sun set. Need to get there sooner next time so the light isn't so faint. The setting sun cast a very warm glow on her and I did not want to remove that in post so I left as I saw it. Honestly a bit confused as to what is the best crop for a shot like this. Do you prefer like this or with more room on the right for the bird to fly into?
Canon 7d2 and Canon 100-400ii. ISO 800, F 5.6, 349mm, SS 1/2500, +1. (+1 was not enough to get proper exposure but I needed the shutter speed to keep freeze the action. I do not like pushing my ISO above 800 on the 7d2)
In DPP 4 I raised the exposure to +1, raised shadows +1. Converted to TIFF. In PS I cropped, adjustments for highlights and shadows, contrast and saturation, applied noise reduction to background, sharpened bird and applied a bit of noise reduction to bird as well as it was just way too noisy. Seems like the perfect kind of shot to try Neat Image on to see if I could do a better job of preserving details but eliminating noise as well.
Last edited by Isaac Grant; 05-25-2016 at 04:03 PM.
Hi Isaac
Never seen one of these but looks OK to me under tyhe circumstances. If they move anything like ours you did very well. Nice eveniing colours and looks pretty sharp even though its small in frame.
John
Hi Isaac, lovely warm late light here, and I do like the angled flight pose with the straight wings. Well done on getting this fellow in the frame, as they are extremely fast. I would still try and bring out more detail on the bird's left underwing if possible ( right as we view it )
Yeah these birds are like rockets. **** hard to square one up in the frame and get them at the right angle. Could you give me a suggestion as to what specifically you would do to bring up the underwing. I am always looking to learn new techniques and that is one of the reason that I specifically posted this shot.
Hi Isaac, firstly, its always best to get it right in camera. You are on the right track by dialing in a +1 EC, but as the light was fading, you were a little late in having the best light. Also timing the flight angle to have the wings 'exposed' to the sun would have been first prize too. Downloading your image and you finding that its a touch 'underexposed'. a little pp work can help. Im sure there are lots of ways, but this was a quick and easy way to bring up a little more detail. I masked the whole bird, but left out the lighter area of the breast. I made a copy of the layer, and selected screen mode in the layers palette. I then played with the opacity to suit, that it was not too much.
Female Purple Martin
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