Harris Hawk

[thomasryan]

An early morning Harris Hawk sporting a fluffy head. After the advice I received on this forum, I'm trying not to oversharpen the image, but on my monitor I have a difficult time seeing any halos. Sharpness level 6 at the time of exposure and increased to 8 in DPP during post processing. I hope this is better (not oversharpened). Thanks for looking...tom

40D 1/800 @ 5.6 +1 ISO 400 300mmf4 L +1.4x

[Terry Sohl]

Nicely done on a beautiful bird. It's a nice little over-the-shoulder look.

It's always tough to avoid a sharpening halo in a high contrast area like this, with a dark bird against a bright background. Easy way to avoid the sharpening halo in this case...use the select tool to select just the blue sky, then inverse your selection so the bird and telephone pole are the only things selected. You can also contract the selected area by a pixel or two so the selected area is just inside the bird/pole, and then do your sharpening. You'll get the bird sharpened, but avoid any sharpening halo on the high contast areas where dark bird meets bright sky.

[Steve Canuel]

No sharpening halos to my eye (could maybe even use just a tiny touch more using the technique suggested by Terry) I think you lighten up the eye just a bit more to get some more contrast/detail too. Nice image of a nice looking bird.

[Tony Whitehead]

Lovely detail in the dark plumage and I like the look in the eye. Terry has given good advice regarding a selective sharpening strategy. In this case I think the perch is more at risk of oversharpening due to it's texture. I like the way the perch colour echoes the wing coverts.

[thomasryan]

Nicely done on a beautiful bird. It's a nice little over-the-shoulder look.

It's always tough to avoid a sharpening halo in a high contrast area like this, with a dark bird against a bright background. Easy way to avoid the sharpening halo in this case...use the select tool to select just the blue sky, then inverse your selection so the bird and telephone pole are the only things selected. You can also contract the selected area by a pixel or two so the selected area is just inside the bird/pole, and then do your sharpening. You'll get the bird sharpened, but avoid any sharpening halo on the high contast areas where dark bird meets bright sky.

Thanks for the tips Terry...I'll give them a try...tom