Great Pied Hornbill in Flight

[Krishnan]

This is a hand held shot taken early morning in light mist.

D3 , 300 2.8VR + TC17, ISO 2500
1/1000 @ F5

Tweaked a little of curves but, I let the overall image remain pretty much alone.

Full frame shot


Comments & critiques appreciated.

[Lance Peters]

What a amazing looking bird - not seen one before.

For my personal Taste - I would like to see some more contrast - looks a bit flat - realise you might want to keep the early morning misty feel.
Would have liked to see you get him before he had flown past you - a better head angle and eye contact would also improve dramatically.

Keep them coming - hope to see more of this guy :)

[Krishnan]

Thanks for your suggestions Lance.

I did boost contrast on the bird and if i increased it from its present levels the details tend to get blocked.

Typically how would one go about improving such an image ? Is it curves or is it levels ? Would be nice to get some ideas.

Best Regards

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Hi Krishnan,
ISO 2500? Few years back we could not have believed it.

I did a few tweaking to your image. Can't do much more saturation, as the colour of the hornbill will become unnatural.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Krishnan]

Thanks Sabyasachi,

It does indeed look much better. What did you do ? Would be nice to know the steps.

I typically like to get the hard work done on camera ...well most times :-)

Thanks once again. Much appreciated.

Added: Ah, Levels it is, I seldom use it but, it works very well in this case.

[Sabyasachi Patra]

I use lightroom. I found that there was a bit of bright highlights. So recovered that. Then adjusted the black point. Little bit of clarity, just a hint of vibrance (+5 as the colours in the hornbills beak was already saturated). Saturation remained at 0.
In the levels sliders, pulled back the highlight a little bit (-19), dark to (-12), shadows to (-33). The curve was linear. You can take this as indicative. In the raw, it will be easier to see the subtle change better. Hope this helps.

Cheers
Sabyasachi

[Krishnan]

Got it thanks :-)

Well I typically do "Gamma correction" on the RGB and then touch the luminosity. I follow the "Ron Reznick" technique. Anything new thing I read, I finally always come back to Ron's method since he has already covered it in a very fundamental way in his e-book.

Meaning, Get R ,G & B move shadow slider to beginning of data, then, get the midtone slider, which would have shifted right, back to the original center point. After R, G & B are done with, bring the luminosity shadow slider also to beginning of data and touch the midtone slider to suit taste.

Then as a second step apply curves as needed.

Now, I did a levels like you mentioned and that looks best. Typically I use curves and hardly any levels. But, I guess here since the data is quite well shifted to the right, Levels works well. The the tweaks on saturation etc I do next.

Thanks once again

Cheers