Dull green bird on dull green background

[Glenn Pure]

This is a Striated Thornbill which I photographed on a perch I've set up above a birdbath in my garden on the urban fringe of Canberra. I've been getting quite a lot of visitors to it lately as it's been very dry here and I guess many water sources have dried up. This bird spent a minute or so checking out for danger before popping down for a drink and was accompanied by one or two others (quite typical). These birds are tiny so you are getting quite a close-up view. Crop is about half the frame area.

As always, thank you for looking and for any comments you are kind enough to share.

Technical: Canon 80D with EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM at 400mm handheld. Manual exposure 1/200 sec, f7.1, ISO 1600. Processed in Canon DPP 4 (digital lens optimiser @ 50, sharpness = 3, crop, lighting adjustments, NR) then exported 16 bit TIFF to Photoshop Elements with Neat Image NR plugin. Modest NR to bird and stronger NR to background. Bird only sharpened in PSE (Sharpness tool, remove Gaussian Blur) after final size reduction.

[David Seymour]

Hi Glenn,

I really like this image, it has great sharpness and wonderful feather detail particularly in the feathers behind the eye. To my eye that isn't a dull green bird at all but simply a beautiful one, exceptionally well captured! The more subdued background I think really makes the bird 'pop'. The other thing I like about the background is the way the bird seems to be looking into the more highlighted area on the right. These nervous, twitchy little birds are difficult to capture at the best of times, so you've done a remarkably good job with this one.

Cheers, David S

[John Mack]

The detail on the bird is great. Nice perch,nice background,nice bird.

[Daniel Cadieux]

I like the colours too. I see what you mean about subdued, but it is very appealing. Sharp indeed, perhaps too sharp as posted. I love the overlapping far wing and layers of primary feathers on it.

[Bill Dix]

Lovely range of olives and ochres. My first reaction also was that it was oversharpened, but I don't see any crunchiness, just exceedingly sharp feather detail.

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Glenn, lovely eye level view of this little guy, and a neat pose looking along the perch. I like the various colours on him, and before reading any other comments, I too feel the plumage behind his head and wing seem slightly oversharpened. As this is your feeder setup, you have plenty more opportunities to come away with some more fine images.

[Glenn Pure]

Thank you David, John, Dan, Bill and Stu. I was expecting some comments on the sharpening here. I applied less output sharpening than usual on this. May have another look at it but this is pretty close to reality. Maybe backing off the contrast a bit might help?

[Isaac Grant]

I like this very much. The tones of the bird work very well against the background. Nice pose as well. I think the sharpening is fine. It does not look crunchy to me. I expect that the bird is just fluffed up and the feathers, especially around the face just look more exaggerated than they usually do. I see some noise on the bird, specifically on the buffy colored undertail coverts. The background would benefit from some NR as well.

[Glenn Pure]

I like this very much. The tones of the bird work very well against the background. Nice pose as well. I think the sharpening is fine. It does not look crunchy to me. I expect that the bird is just fluffed up and the feathers, especially around the face just look more exaggerated than they usually do. I see some noise on the bird, specifically on the buffy colored undertail coverts. The background would benefit from some NR as well.

Thanks Isaac. There's sure to be a bit of noise on the bird as I go gently there to preserve detail and will live with a touch of noise as a result. However the background was hammered hard with Neat Image and I personally can't see any there - any particular area where it is more obvious to you so I can get a better handle on this?

[Isaac Grant]

On my screen the whole background was grainy. I ran another round of neat image on the background with luminance at 85%. CR and CB at 80. Of course there will be some banding, etc. when it is run again on an already compressed image. In particular there are problems sometimes with green backgrounds. But that should be lessened by working on the full res file.

[Glenn Pure]

On my screen the whole background was grainy. I ran another round of neat image on the background with luminance at 85%. CR and CB at 80. Of course there will be some banding, etc. when it is run again on an already compressed image. In particular there are problems sometimes with green backgrounds. But that should be lessened by working on the full res file.

Thanks again Isaac. I can see it now but quite feint and your repost has dealt with it. Agree, best to work on the original raw to avoid artefacts. Maybe I need to be more aggressive on it in future but I did have luminance at 90% on the backgorund after autosampling.