Cape Penduline Tit

[Robert Ainslie]

Photographed at Port Alfred South Africa.
600mm, ISO1250, F5.6, 1/750
Sharpened and cropped for presentation in Lightroom.
Any advice appreciated.

[Isaac Grant]

Hi Robert. Your have a nice singing pose and I like your choice of composition. The bird and plants are over exposed by about a stop I think. You need to lower your highlights as well. Image quality on the bird could be improved as it looks over sharpened and crunchy to me. Also the background could use some noise reduction and the whole shot has a yellow cast. I would go back to the RAW if it is tack sharp and start over by lowering the exposure, taming the highlights and seeing if you can get the colors right.

[gail bisson]

I always hate to comment after Isaac because he usually nails the critique and I have little else to offer!
Hope you rework the RAW to show off this (new to me ) bird.
Gail

[Robert Ainslie]

Dear Isaac,

Thank you for the valuable comments.
I reset the image and started afresh.

The following changes were done:
The photo was taken with +1 stop and this was reduced by 1stop during processing. Taking the highlights right down as suggested seems tohave produced a less exposed image.
I set the color-balance from the light-grey on the bird’s beak.Not sure if this is sufficient to remove the yellow cast you are referring to.(the bird to my eyes has a lot of yellow tones)
The background has received more noise reduction.
Highlights: -100
Shadows: 0
Whites: +33
Blacks: +10

Clarity: 17
Dehaze: +10
Vibrance: +7
Saturation: +7

Linear contrast
Luminance: 24
Sharpening: 40
Masking: 50

My untrained eye sees a big improvement, but I think I am dealing with an image which is not entirely sharp.

Kind regards,
Rob

[Robert Ainslie]

Duplicate

[Isaac Grant]

Your repost is an improvement. Exposure is better but I agree that the shot is not tack sharp. Looking forward to more...