A small bird about 10 cm long caught by a ray of sunlight in dark rainforest.
Canon EOS R5 RF100-500 @ 451 HH
1/2000 f8 iso2500 manual
ACR PS2024 cloned a couple of bight bits in BG, Light sharpening.
Hi Colin ... a kind of interesting shot of a bird I do not know and will never see
I kind of like the image design and title .
Interesting what you call " light sharpening " .... sharpening might be ok , but the contrast has killed the image for me personally . Blacks clipped to a large degree and the HL look blown or very very bright with no details showing .
I think the image would benefit from a more gentle approach in processing of contrast and sharpening .... just my take . But you might see it differently
Andreas, I have to push back, during processing I use an Action that shows up any blocked blacks or blown whites. Apart from blown white in the catchlight there were none of either.
Yes it is bright but that was the circumstance, and I did soften blacks and whites.
The raw image was very sharp, so used minimal just to cover for posting. Not sure what you mean about no details when individual barbs are visible throughout- on my screen at least.
Colin ... the feathers are showing very sharp ( too sharp for my taste ) as a result of strong lighting and you not taming the tones in the image , quite simple . If nothing is blown, then it should be easy to tame the very bright parts and tame the fully choked blacks to create more dynamic range for more VISIBLE NOT SHARPER DETAILS in the subject and the BG . Still maintaining the kind of stark contrast but even with hints of detail ion the BG . With missing details I was referring to featureless blocked or very very bright tones ....
Not sure if your action works .... for the blacks/whites , at least the posted image shows blocked blacks .... not sure why one needs that action . Just look at the histogram .... it shows it all .
But hey Colin , this is just my personal view if you think it works , fine . WE see things just differently , which is fully ok .
The Action does work, easy to test with a threshold layer. Not necessarily a matter of seeing things differently. This was the scene that I shot, full pollution-free sunlight hitting the subject in an otherwise very dark environment.
Very different to the soft European light you work in.