Osprey in Flight

[Cheryl Flory]

Canon 40D
Sigma 50 - 500
1/400
F9
ISO 400


Nearly full frame, I cropped a bit off the left. This pair of Ospreys were not comfortable with me below their nest so I didn't stay long. They would fly by to check on what I was doing and then do a close inspection of their nest. (Like me standing on the ground could reach their nest lol) Their uneasiness was surprising to me since they were in a park type area.

I would like to make the face more noticeable and did some extra sharpening on it, but don't know what else to do. The area by the feet looks glaring and overexposed, though PS says it isn't.

[Alberto Oria]

Great Chery love eye contact, sharpness and exposure

[Gus Cobos]

nicely done Cheryl
I like the flight position of your bird and the eye contact. You have good details and plesant colors congrats...:cool:

[Brian Wong]

Canon 40D
Sigma 50 - 500
1/400
F9
ISO 400


Nearly full frame, I cropped a bit off the left. This pair of Ospreys were not comfortable with me below their nest so I didn't stay long. They would fly by to check on what I was doing and then do a close inspection of their nest. (Like me standing on the ground could reach their nest lol) Their uneasiness was surprising to me since they were in a park type area.

I would like to make the face more noticeable and did some extra sharpening on it, but don't know what else to do. The area by the feet looks glaring and overexposed, though PS says it isn't.

Hi Cheryl!

Great job for full frame! I love the eye contact, with the bird flying toward you. Looks sharp here. For the white feet, you could try toning it down (just a small amount!). The wing details look good. You may need to clean your sensor. At f/9 (and as you close down more), you will start to see more and more dust spots. This does give you better DOF (which helps sharpness issues) ... however suggest trying more shutter speed with a larger opening for BIF. I would also try something to reduce the background sky noise. My complements to you!

[Oscar Zangroniz]

Great capture Cheryl. Very sharp and specially like the eye contact of this ospreycongrats

[Arthur Morris]

Hi C, I saved the image and opened it in Photoshop and there is indeed some clipping, at least in the JPEG presented above. Let's start from the begining. 1: What program do you use to convert your RAW files?

[Harold Davis]

hi cheryl, love the look you are getting from the osprey. i will leave it to mr artie to help you with your PS work..but i think it will be easily recoverable!!

[Cheryl Flory]

Art,
I converted it from RAW in the Canon progrom DPP. And then I used PhotoShop CS. I adjusted the curves to the whites being about 235. (I am not at home at my computer right now, so I give much more detail than that.) Up until this site, when I had questions I asked my daughter, but she is getting tough to reach lately. lol. Oh, I did answer your question on her in the silh thread. But this morning she said how much she appreciates everyones help.

[Arthur Morris]

Art,
I converted it from RAW in the Canon progrom DPP. And then I used PhotoShop CS. I adjusted the curves to the whites being about 235. (I am not at home at my computer right now, so I give much more detail than that.) Up until this site, when I had questions I asked my daughter, but she is getting tough to reach lately. lol. Oh, I did answer your question on her in the silh thread. But this morning she said how much she appreciates everyones help.

You state that the whites in the converted file are at 235. The fact is that there are lots of whites in the JPEGs that are at 255, i.e., burned out and over-exposed. Either you are in error concerning the master file or really screwed something up while creating the JPEG... Can you simply convert the file with so that it has no blown whites and then create a JPEG without doing anything to it and then post it here?

I saw your answer and more shockingly, your daughter responded to one of my questions and asked another one of me. :)

[Cheryl Flory]

you got an answer from my daughter??? Mark it on your calendar! lol

I will go follow your directions on the file. (Just got back in town, so give me a few minutes)

[Arthur Morris]

Yes, really, and take your time.

[Cheryl Flory]

here is a totally unadjusted image. For this one, I converted the image from RAW to TIFF in Canon's DPP, no adjusting. Then opened it in PS CS. Using curves, I found one tiny spot near the upper leg at 250. The rest of the bright area showed a range of 240 - 247. Then I reduced the longest side to 800. And then used Save for Web.

I didn't save the TIFF file with layers in the previous adjustment, so I am prob confusing this pic with another I adjusted the same day when I said I raised the whites to 235.

[Arthur Morris]

I checked the JPEG. NG. There are still blown highlights. Go back and convert the image darker and then repost it. Do this by moving the Brightness and the Contrast sliders far enough to the left on both the RAW and the RGB tabs to the left so that the whites are nowhere near the right side of the histogram. Give them one full box of clearance. (This may not be the most technically correct advise it is given because you are having trouble creating a JPEG without any blown whites...) The just size it to a less than 200kb 800 wide JPEG.

[Cheryl Flory]

ok. Put a new RAW into DPP and adjusted the brightness tab so there were no whites in the right end box.
When I went to the RGB tab, there was no info in the right end box after adjusting it darker in the RAW tab.
Now that bright area on the rump does look a lot better.

Can the brightness/darkness of my monitor affect this?

Thank you, Artie!

[Arthur Morris]

OK, we overdid it a bit going too dark but I wanted to make sure that the whites were OK. I did a bunch of stuff and came up with a pretty sweet repost. Of note I painted a QM of teh brighter whites (which were the only part of the bird lit by direct sunlight), added 100 points of black to the whites in Selective color, deaturated the yellows a ton, and then multiplied that layer... Big improvement. Much better to have done the same thing after being sure that the white were converted to the edge (rather than so dark as we did here). That way there is less noise when you open up the blacks... BTW, I never did exctly what I did to the whites before so thanks for teaching me a new trick...

[Cheryl Flory]

.. BTW, I never did exctly what I did to the whites before so thanks for teaching me a new trick...[/quote]

Too funny, Artie! lol


Thank you very much for your patient and generous help! I very much appreciate it! During the 3 day family reunion, I probably checked in on the BPN every several hours on my dad's computer. Which of course, led to a lot of comments. lol and then conversation about the uniqueness of this site and its moderators/members/contributors.

[Cheryl Flory]

O Much better to have done the same thing after being sure that the white were converted to the edge (rather than so dark as we did here). ...

In my first post, the whites were close to the edge, but not over, on my monitor and PS CS. Obviously, that was still too close. How do I know when they are converted to the edge but not over? Just put them 1/2 way into the far right box?