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Thread: Grebe

  1. #1
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    Default Grebe

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    Pied-billed Grebe at Gilbert Water Ranch 3-31-2009

    1/640 at F11 and ISO400
    Canon 40D
    Bigma at 500m

  2. #2
    Axel Hildebrandt
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    Welcome to BPN, Scott. Very nice first post. I like the angle and eye contact and would give it more room. You could selectively sharpen the eye, the critical focus seems to be on the body. Keep them coming!

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    Avian Moderator Randy Stout's Avatar
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    Scott:

    Welcome to BPN! I certainly agree with Axel's comments. It is too tight all the way around, and does need a little more sharpening on head/eye. It takes practice to put the sensor on the eye, and sometimes it just isn't possible with fast moving birds. You certainly had a small enough aperture.

    There are some dust spots or blemishes in the water in front of the bird, that I would clean up.

    A great start! Share some more with us.

    Randy

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    Hi-

    I am also new with my activity here and find the site and folks very helpful. My welcome goes out to you too.

    I concur with what others have said here. My first reaction to the image was wanting more space above and to the right but having more left and bottom to a lesser degree would be good too IMO.

    Sharpening - On an image such as this care will have to be taken to not sharpen the light pixels to much I think. Two part sharpening (light and dark pixels separately) usually works well on an image with highlights like this one.

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    Super Moderator Daniel Cadieux's Avatar
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    A big welcome to BPN Scott! You got yourself a nice low angle here, and the grebe offered you a perfect glance-back pose. I like the water drops, particularly the larger one on the body. I agree with more room around the subject and more sharpning on the face area. You're off to a good start...can't wait to see more :-)

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    Publisher Arthur Morris's Avatar
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    To Scott and Kim, Welcome, and thank you both for your membership support.

    The guys above have done a spot on job.

    #1: Is your lens a zoom?

    #2: Did you crop the ORIG?

    Sharpest focus is on the butt. Can you please post the whole image before any proceesing?
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    1) The lens is a 50-500mm zoom

    2) I have plenty of room around the Grebe -- my mistake is that I just cropped to close -- I have redone the photo to a) give more room around the grebe b) sharpen around the head and c) remove some of the debris in the water and it looks better- -thanks to all

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    Avian Moderator Randy Stout's Avatar
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    Scott:

    You can add a repost of your own image, if you want to show us how it turned out.
    Just use the quick reply at bottom of thread, but hit "go advanced" and it will let you enter the repost. I find that is helpful when I have worked on an image, and want to tweak or fine tune it, and get the groups input.

    Cheers

    Randy

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    Recropped for more room -- cleaned up some water debris -- worked on sharpening the head

  10. #10
    Axel Hildebrandt
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    I cropped a bit off top and bottom and sharpened it more.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Scott Frye View Post
    Recropped for more room -- cleaned up some water debris -- worked on sharpening the head

    Scott much better to my eye. I love the POV you used and you did well!

    I am one that does not like images as sharp as some do and maybe that is why I fail to sharpen my own quite enough at times. We each see things a bit differently and I think this one could stand a bit more sharpening and I ran a some USM on it at 0.2/600/0 (ran twice to get that) but each time USM was use it was faded immediately to Luminosity (that fading is done automatically in PS with a script). I then rolled back the opacity on the sharpening of the "light pixels' to but 40% of the above but left the dark ones at 100% opacity. Here is the results of that -

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    Publisher Arthur Morris's Avatar
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    Axel, Love the crop, esp. from the bottom but your version is over-sharpened. Scott--it is much better with more room. Best with a whole bird to have it less than 75% of the longest dimension...
    BIRDS AS ART Blog: great info and lessons, lots of images with our legendary BAA educational Captions; we will not sell you junk. 30+ years of long lens experience/e-mail with gear questions.

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  13. #13
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    The highlights have been mentioned Scott. Keep them coming.

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