Northern Flicker Frolicing in the Grass
Image made this morning at Franko Park, Salisbury Township, PA.
Canon 30D; Canon 300mm f/2.8L IS w/ Canon 2x TC; Canon 580 EX II Flash with Better Beamer bracket mounted; handheld
1/800 sec @ f/5.6; ISO 200; 0 EV; AWB; FEC -1; Focal length 600mm (960mm equivalent)
Hi Ed! I like the feather detail in the breast and the nice even light. I think another round of USM would help here, and I might crop a bit off the bottom. Thanks for posting!
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Thanks for the critique, Doug. As always, much appreciated. You know, sometimes I feel like Goldilocks (:D). This porridge is too hot... this porridge is too cold. Only in my case it's this image looks oversharpened... this image could use another round of USM! :D I seem to alternate between over- and undersharpening. One of these days I'll find the porridge that's "just right!" :);)Originally Posted by Doug Brown
By the way, here's the image with "another round of USM".
Looks better Ed! Stick with it; you'll get the hang of sharpening!
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To me the repost looks a bit oversharpened (sorry :) ) and the light seems a bit harsh, cropping from the bottom is a great suggestion and other than that, I like the pose and the species a lot! Congratulations!
OK folks! I got one undersharpened and one oversharpened. And I have one "nice even light" and one "the light seems a bit harsh".
HELP!!!! Your thoughts?
Nice pose and lovely subject. I agree that cropping about half of the oof grass at the bottom would strengthen the image. The harshness of the light can be judged by how dark the shadows are. Doug said that the light was even. Even lighting is accomplished by pointing your shadow at the subject so that you have full frontal lighting. Frontal lighting will prevent areas of your subject from being shadowed while other areas are brightly lit. I find the light acceptable in your image. The little shadow on the bird's back indicates that the light was brighter than ideal, but not bad. If you would post your sharpening numbers, you could get suggestions on good general sharpening numbers. To me, the repost appears oversharpened. Learning selective sharpening techniques will help you get your images just right. If you don't feel confident with your sharpening skills, shoot me a pm or email, and I'll send you some info.
Just to confuse you more :D:D
The second one does look over-sharpened. The way it looks over-sharpened to me, on my monitor, is the halo around the bird. Therefore, next time when you want to sharpen, and assuming you use photoshop, you duplicate the original layer and then sharpen the duplicate. After that, you add a mask to the duplicate and paint on the mask to show only the parts of the bird that you want them to look sharp (as opposed to "look sharpened"). Try to stay away from the "edge" of the bird. If after you do all that the bird still looks too sharp. Adjust the opacity of the duplicate. Some people actually over-sharpen the image and then adjust the final sharpness through adjusting the opacity.
As for shadow, shadow is what gives us the 3-dimensional feel of what we see in the world. It is shadow that let us see the roundness of a ping-pong ball, for example. The key, I think is not to have very dark shadow. Even worse is big shadow areas with no details (of course there're exceptions and you may have seen them in other kinds of photographs). That's when fill flash and/or reflectors can help.
As far as the light goes, I'm more side with Doug. But it would be better if you could open up that shadow a bit.
Last edited by Desmond Chan; 09-15-2008 at 11:11 PM.
OK folks. This is one last attempt at getting the sharpening right... or at least better. Linda gave me a few tips on using USM so I thought I would give them a whirl. Definitely not oversharpened. And no halo that I can see. And while I was working on the image, I cropped a bit off the bottom as requested. So any final opinions?
Looks much better Ed. The composition is much stronger with the bottom crop and the sharpening looks good.
Thumbs up on the final version Ed!
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