White Ibis

[Joseph Przybyla]

This is how the White Ibis appears most of the year, quite striking and beautiful. In a response to this thread I will post how the White Ibis appears during breeding. Both image captured at Lake Morton in Lakeland, Florida. This image was captured in September and the image of the breeding White Ibis was captured in March. Comments and critique welcomed and appreciated. Thank you for viewing.

Nikon D500
Nikon 500mm PF, camera and lens supported by a Oben carbon fiber monopod with a Wimberly MonoGimbal head
1/1600 F/5.6 Matrix Metering EV 0 ISO 450 Auto 1 WB, image captured at 500mm (750mm 35mm Equivalent)
Post processed in Lightroom Classic
Cropped slightly for composition and presentation

[Joseph Przybyla]

This is the breeding White Ibis, profound changes, quite dramatic.

[Dorian Anderson]

A very nice comparison, Joe. Of the two, I think I prefer the non-breeding image because the trademark beak is in a better orientation as thus more present. Regardless, both images are very nice. I love how the blue eyes match the
backgrounds, and the details on both bird are very nice. Excellent eye contact as well!

[Jonathan Ashton]

Super images colours and details spot on. I had not appreciate the difference until I saw the two images together.

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Joe, super portrait in pane 1.

Just a thought and it is just a thought..., but cleaning up the whites you get a bit more detail, however this may not be reflective of the species colour????

At ISO450, you don't need to apply NR Joe, it will kill that finer detail as you can't manually dial in adjustments, only key ones to a degree.

TFS
Steve

[Joseph Przybyla]

Hi Joe, super portrait in pane 1.

Just a thought and it is just a thought..., but cleaning up the whites you get a bit more detail, however this may not be reflective of the species colour????

At ISO450, you don't need to apply NR Joe, it will kill that finer detail as you can't manually dial in adjustments, only key ones to a degree.

TFS
Steve

Hi Steve, thank you for the edit. I'll give your suggestion a try. Regarding noise reduction at ISO 450... I agree that the old noise reduction algorithms hammered the fine detail also caused artifacts. The new algorithms powered be AI are much better, these algorithms can distinguish between noise and fine detail. Lightroom's Denoise, new with the most recent update is very good. That is what I use now as the first thing in processing on the RAW image. As a comparison I processed this image with the exact settings as the image in my original post without the noise reduction. I agree that it probably didn't need noise reduction but running the noise reduction didn't destroy the fine detail. Here is a post of the image without noise reduction.

[Steve Kaluski]

Joe, I will come back to you re Lr etc just having a birthday lunch…

[Joseph Przybyla]

Joe, I will come back to you re Lr etc just having a birthday lunch…

Well, Happy Birthday!!!!!!

[Steve Kaluski]

As I've said NR doesn't really need to be applied below ISO2000, however your call, what is the % you set it to?

[Kurt Bowman]

Very nice portrait Joe! I love those blue eyes and the matching BG! I also love the difference between the non-breeding and breeding colors. Thanks for the comparison