Twilight return to nightly roost...

[David Roach]

EOS R6 RF 100-500 @451 f8 1/1600 ISO 2000 Manual EXP, HH, cropped from left and bottom to alleviate distracting FG elements

Created about 5-10 minutes after sun was down with a very clear western sky with full after glow. The skin on face/beak and legs looked to be in molt/transition (thus the splotchy look). The primaries on the right wing just made the frame.

Thanks to all for very valued help on previous posts.

[Paul Burdett]

Hi David. Love the pose and BG. Whites look good to me and the bird is sharp and the HA is perfect. I'm not a fan of the crop here...I'd lose some off the bottom and add more on top, as that wing needs more room. There's also something "funky" (as Artie would say) happening in the lower centre foreground? Did you clone there? I'm also seeing a marked halo around the feet...over sharpened?

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi David ... nice light pose .
Wee bit tight at the top , for me .
Processing looks off ... everything looks a bit hammered with heavy NR ??!!

TFS Andreas

[Arthur Morris]

Can you confirm that this was a huge underexposure? The wing and tail feathers look fine. The body feathers look like enamel paint, i.e., zero detail. Too much NR there. And the face looks as if it were chiseled out of stone. Not sure why on that ...

with love, artie

[Arthur Morris]

ps: or was it ISO 20,000?

a

[David Roach]

Can you confirm that this was a huge underexposure? The wing and tail feathers look fine. The body feathers look like enamel paint, i.e., zero detail. Too much NR there. And the face looks as if it were chiseled out of stone. Not sure why on that ...

with love, artie

Astute Gentlemen,

First, the image was underexposed (brightest whites in low 200s) and the stated ISO is correct at 2000. That under exposure combined with my sloppy PP caused the issues. The sun was gone as some stragglers flew in late and I did not bump ISO as I should have from the sunset settings. Then, because I had just downloaded the latest Topaz versions for denoise and sharpening decided to try the auto settings. First, denoise with the defaults on BG only (the hammering referred to by the professor (Andreas). Then the sharpening (again on auto) as Paul and Artie noted. Of course the main issue with the image IQ is still the under exposure even though there was not egregious noise at ISO 2000. Revisited PP from scratch with minimal processing to include one round of NI NR on entire image(minimal impact), bumped vibrance and sat a touch and then minimal shapening (no Topaz this time). There was no cloning on BG and it looks as it does in raw file. BTW, just noticed the EXIF data is not there from the JPG. Found that happened when I started using export for web to get proper colorspace for web presentaion. I'm sure that's a setting in export for web. Does anyone know where I can change it to allow the data to come through? Thanks to all for the usual valuable teachings.

Peace,
David

[Arthur Morris]

Thanks and YW, David. This version is not very much better and there are some funky colors ...

with love, artie

[Daniel Cadieux]

Nothing much to add that has not been mentioned, but in regards to your lost exif: You are using "save for web"? If so, there is a "metadata" drop down option that may be set to "none". If that is the case, set it to "all". DO note this adds some size to the file though.

[Steve Kaluski]

David, here you go