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Thread: Female grey seal

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    Lifetime Member Mike Poole's Avatar
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    Default Female grey seal

    Name:  enjoying-the-surf-BPN.jpg
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    A female enjoying a little time in the surf down in Norfolk. Only a small crop this time, hopefully better IQ, tried to remove as many sensor mushrooms as I could

    Canon 1dx
    500mm + 1.4x
    ISO 2000
    1/1600 f7.1

    Mike

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    Hi Mike, a nice shot of the grey seal covered in sand and in water. Good HA and eye with nice BG. Good low POV too.

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    BPN Member Andreas Liedmann's Avatar
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    Hi Mike .... need to visit .... reminds me of Donna Nook .

    A classy very nice Image of this species ....well done Mike !! Love the colors and the overall tones . You have lots of detail to show up in the fur .... but IMHO you have hit the fine details to hard for me taste . I think the blacks are a tad heavy and you have gone too far with the sharpening . Depending on the technique you use , my solution would be drop the white fringe of the sharpening !!!! Told you already in the past .
    Framing works and the low POV is a must for the species , if location allows it .

    TFS Andreas

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    Lifetime Member Mike Poole's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Andreas Liedmann View Post
    Hi Mike .... need to visit .... reminds me of Donna Nook .

    A classy very nice Image of this species ....well done Mike !! Love the colors and the overall tones . You have lots of detail to show up in the fur .... but IMHO you have hit the fine details to hard for me taste . I think the blacks are a tad heavy and you have gone too far with the sharpening . Depending on the technique you use , my solution would be drop the white fringe of the sharpening !!!! Told you already in the past .
    Framing works and the low POV is a must for the species , if location allows it .

    TFS Andreas
    Thanks Andreas.

    Waiting for that book to arrive maybe that will make a difference to my workflow regarding the sharpening.

    Unfortunately I dont recall the white sharpening you mention, possibly too advanced for me at the time?

    Thanks

    Mike

    Sent from my SM-G973F using Tapatalk

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    BPN Member Andreas Liedmann's Avatar
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    Hi Mike .... the easiest task to get rid of.
    EVERY traditional sharpening method is working with contrast , just amplifying the contrast along edges . The width of the edges is given by your chosen radius of your preferred sharpening method. The larger the radius , the wider the fringe will be . You have a dark and a light fringe ( simply contrast ) . Steve has visualized it with your previous seal posting .... ( bunnies , oversharpening )

    The solution is so easy .

    You need the layer that is being sharpened ( no matter what sharpening method was used ) .

    duplicate the layer ( you should have now three layers in the layer stack . )

    Background
    Sharpened layer
    Sharpened layer ( copy )

    Now the blend modes come into play

    Sharpened layer ( set to darken blend mode )
    Sharpened layer copy ( set to lighten blend mode ) or vice versa , just need one to be darken other one to be lighten

    Now drop the opacity of the lighten layer ( white fringe ) to i.e. 50 %
    Just keep the ratio of both layers 1:2 ( opacity ) and you are good to go .

    Hope you got it .

    Cheers Andreas

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    Wildlife Moderator Steve Kaluski's Avatar
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    I like the scene and low POV Mike, but personally would like a bit more below. Without seeing the raw, we can only make assumptions, but for me the water looks about right, the subject is struggling for detail, so is the camera front focusing and or where is the focus point and how/what type, single, assisted point, but please don't say spot Mike???

    Yes the subject lacks detail, the eye could be lightened a bit more to show detail and I wouldn't sharpen the whiskers, shows halos.

    I would pop the file over to Andreas here Mike and let him have a look at both camera settings and the file. At the end of the day the file is either sharp or not and there are so many ways to sharpen an image, do you add some pre-sharpening or not, only sharpen when the file is cropped, not before, but what works for one, may not work for another, no real 'Silver bullet' as such, but it all comes down to the raw. Mike can you add the steps from when you complete the Master file and then progress to output for web, in that way it may highlight the issue.

    TFS
    Steve

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    Really like the colors on this one. Nice low angle and nice light as well. The pose is nice. The background is great.

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    Lifetime Member Mike Poole's Avatar
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    Cheers all, here's the RAW if anybody wants to take a look

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/m38iu2f3zc...U4752.CR2?dl=0

    Mike

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    Wildlife Moderator Steve Kaluski's Avatar
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    Hi Mike, OK if it was me based on the raw I would have gone for more DoF because of the angle of the head, removed the 1.4 and had the FP on the eye. Here you have the FP below and on the cheek. Albeit the histogram is ETTR I might have dropped a third of a stop for the brighter areas, especially the 'high frequency' areas that run around the face, no real tone/detail. The actual black part of the nose isn't sharp and in the very soft fur sharpness is blurred, but not sure how much may have held there. Detail in the actual 'snout' is lacking, behind the eye the fur is sharper. If the high burst is set to max ie 12, then I would drop it down to allow the AF to catch up, you don't need to shoot this high, I rarely do unless it's like a sprinting cheetah and you will find you will have amore 'keepers', even with BIF. If this is HH then consider a skimmer pod, great for the beach. Tracking I would not have it for this on -1, purely that the subject can move in an instant and may have the FP set to single point or AF point expansion, but on the eye, to me and some may disagree, fine, but the eye is the FP.

    IMHO there are a few variable in the execution and this is just my take. If I was going to keep the body for another year then I would send it in to Canon for a Sensor clean and calibration. If this is done then you can narrow down the issues and it will mainly be human error.

    Hope Andreas chimes in too.

    Cheers
    Steve

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    Just my take, strength of colour on the seal is a guess in the light, but the true WB is 5392 Tint +2 to have a mid grey point and no colour cast, then you can address the colour management accordingly knowing you haven't and variation in the RGB channels.

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    Lifetime Member Mike Poole's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Steve Kaluski View Post
    Hi Mike, OK if it was me based on the raw I would have gone for more DoF because of the angle of the head, removed the 1.4 and had the FP on the eye. Here you have the FP below and on the cheek. Albeit the histogram is ETTR I might have dropped a third of a stop for the brighter areas, especially the 'high frequency' areas that run around the face, no real tone/detail. The actual black part of the nose isn't sharp and in the very soft fur sharpness is blurred, but not sure how much may have held there. Detail in the actual 'snout' is lacking, behind the eye the fur is sharper. If the high burst is set to max ie 12, then I would drop it down to allow the AF to catch up, you don't need to shoot this high, I rarely do unless it's like a sprinting cheetah and you will find you will have amore 'keepers', even with BIF. If this is HH then consider a skimmer pod, great for the beach. Tracking I would not have it for this on -1, purely that the subject can move in an instant and may have the FP set to single point or AF point expansion, but on the eye, to me and some may disagree, fine, but the eye is the FP.

    IMHO there are a few variable in the execution and this is just my take. If I was going to keep the body for another year then I would send it in to Canon for a Sensor clean and calibration. If this is done then you can narrow down the issues and it will mainly be human error.

    Hope Andreas chimes in too.

    Cheers
    Steve

    Thanks Steve - food for thought, I'm going to try and get a better tech handle on stuff this year.

    Just one more question - I couldn't get any closer here due to the location. You mention removing the converter - do you think that would have been advisable, given I'd have needed a larger crop later on? Just thinking of the differences between this file, and a slightly sharper one that needed more cropping

    cheers

    Mike

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    Wildlife Moderator Steve Kaluski's Avatar
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    The reason I suggested removing the TC was based on moving the whole AF into a better position, but in doing so would leave you less at the foot of the image and way more above, therefore it's a trade off IMHO. Cropped into the image a tad more, or as is, have little FG and end up with a really tight head shot. Providing you are not going landscape to portrait which is a 66% drop straight away, not ideal, but a slight crop ie no more than 20-30% then for posting here I don't feel IQ would be lost that much, but any substantial crop will mean a degree of IQ because you have less info/date to work with. Remember, a TC only magnifies, it has no moving parts, but if the calibration is out it will amplify things.

    If a raw is sharp, well exposed and minimal cropping is required then any PP is a breeze. The minute you crop hard into a slightly soft image and add things like Contrast, Clarity (both are a form of Contrast sharpening) into the conversion the worse it becomes in my book. The RP I did was I like 5% either side, FF height.

    Steve

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    Mike the other thing to say is, if you can't get close enough, or it's too dangerous, or you then separate ie mum & pup, pull back and go for a wider angle shot where you have subject in the environment, it's not all about close ups. Pack a 100-400, or a 70-200 in the bag.

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    BPN Member Andreas Liedmann's Avatar
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    Hi Mike ... just had only a quick look , simply not 100% sharp for whatever reason !!! Might have not locked properly , the AF .

    Steve has posted a good RP from my POV .

    Cheers Andreas

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