Proud Pratincole

[Dean Ingwersen]

Hi all,

First post, and loving the forum (congrats to all involved). This shot is of an Australian Pratincole...any comments welcome. My main query relates to the darker areas of the bird - are they too dark? :cool:

Taken with Canon 20D handheld, 100-400L IS @330mm, 1/800, f/7.1, ISO200

[Nonda Surratt]

The bird, pose and the over all colors are very nice. The dark areas of the bird don't bother me, meaning to me they don't distract from the image.:)

[Nicole Brooker]

Nice shot of a bird I haven't seen yet. Sharp and the background is nice. The dark areas of the bird don't bother me either but you could always use the shadow/highlight tool if you wanted to brighten the dark areas a bit more.

[Peter Hawrylyshyn]

i like the photo a lot
soft BG colors, nice head turn , sharp details

although this is also how i might have framed the bird, a question to the "experts" would be: is it better to place the bird more off-centre and if so, to which side would you crop and why?

[Dean Ingwersen]

Thank you all for your comments..it has already had a slight shadows/highlights adjustment made (I was reluctant to push it much further for fear of noise).

I have another query for any contributors or moderators...why would the colours of the image I posted be washed out? The image on my screen is much richer and has good saturation, while the image on the post is quite flat. Any thoughts anybody??

[Peter Hawrylyshyn]

Is your monitor calibrated?
what color space are you working in and what space did you post in?

[Dean Ingwersen]

I've done a quickie calibration without a proper calibration sensor and software and it's worked well so far (i.e. with emailing, printing, etc). And default colour space is sRGB IEC61966-2.1, then I convert to Adobe RGB (1998) when I've 'finished' with an image. Any thoughts? Thanks heaps.

[Peter Hawrylyshyn]

the experts can correct me if i'm wrong, but i think you're doing it backwards
best to open your RAW image into Adobe RGB , process in Photoshop and then one of the last steps for posting on the web is to convert into sRGB . If you captured in JPEG using sRBG, leave it in sRGB to post onto the web. You should not convert into Adobe for posting to the web.

[Peter Hawrylyshyn]

you should also look at the thread in photo techniques from a couple of days ago
Poll: sRGB or RGB in your camera?

i've always used RGB as my camera setting , hence opened into Adobe RBG, but may be changing based upon above thread

[Dean Ingwersen]

Thanks Peter, will do. :-)

[Dean Ingwersen]

Sorry Peter, missed your first post there. Thanks very much...I'll give that a go with another posting and see how I go. Cheers.

[Dean Ingwersen]

Thanks Peter - you were spot on. As soon as I changed the final colour space to sRGB = problem solved (I think anyway)! This is what the image should have looked like ;)