Wicked Red

[LouBuonomo]

Another from Roma, not a specialty but this had to be the most brilliant cardinal I have ever seen. Makes the ones here on LI look drab by comparison.

I was really worried about cooking the reds so I relied on the histogram in the field and I was really happy to see full detail in the RAW/TIFF.. may have lost some in the JPG.

Thanks for looking,
Lou

1DsMKIII, 500F4 ISO400 F8@500 flash M

[Mike Lentz]

Nice pose and setting, the reds look good on my work monitor.

[Randy Stout]

Lou:

A beautiful bird, fine background and although the perch is heavy for this bird, it works pretty well because it doesn't run through the image.

I do think the reds on part of the torso and most of the head are toasted. There is a loss of detail, and when I pulled it up in NX2, the red channel is blown. Not all of the reds, but in the areas I mentioned.

Perhaps someone else will check in Photoshop, but I do think the reds do need to be backed off.

Did you use a three channel histogram display on the camera, which shows each channel as a seperate histogram?

Randy

[Randy Stout]

Lou:

I backed the saturation down just a bit to eliminate the blown red channel in NX2.

It is subtle, but to my eye, I can see more detail in the reds.

Beautiful bird!

Randy

[Doug Brown]

The red channel does look slightly blown on the RGB histogram. I played around with the red saturation to bring the reds back (adjusted the red channel saturation to -2), and I honestly didn't see any additional detail; the reds just looked a little less red. I prefer the OP to the repost; it does more justice to the brilliance of the reds that Lou saw in the field.

[LouBuonomo]

I sure the JPG compression nuked the reds.. they are there in the RAW/TIFF plenty of detail, I can see the shafts. Yes I used all three histos in the field without that would have totally cooked him for sure as the luminosity histo would have been fine while the reds would have been cook.

[arash_hazeghi]

Very nice saturation, can you clone out the leaves that are blocking the tail in the lower left?

[Randy Stout]

Lou:

Thanks for the info. I will have to look again at some of my spoonie images that I have posted. The reds were right on the ragged edge, but not blown, in the NEF, and I didn't think they blew in the jpeg conversion, but it certainly is worth a recheck.

Great bird!

Randy

[Randy Stout]

Lou:

I did just check my last posted spoonie, and in fact, although the NEF showed like 2 hot pixels in the red channel, the jpeg probably had 100. You can't really see it in the jpeg, because they are really scattered, but it is a good lesson learned!!

Cheers

Randy

[Stephen Stephen]

Lou another beautiful bird and the surrounding habitat adds a nice touch.

[Daniel Cadieux]

I like the overall feel to this image. Colour combination goes well together (reds and greens). I would look at toning down the highlights on the bill. Too bad this individual is a little rough around the eye!

[Randy Stout]

Daniel:
Do you have some thoughts on the saturation/highlight issue here? I don't want to belabor the point, but I am always trying to improve in that area.

Thanks

Randy

[Ákos Lumnitzer]

Fantastic bird and I don't even mind that perch Lou, even though it would appear a touch heavy. I also prefer the original post but cannot help too much with the tech stuff to be honest. Thank you for sharing. :)

[Daniel Cadieux]

Daniel:
Do you have some thoughts on the saturation/highlight issue here? I don't want to belabor the point, but I am always trying to improve in that area.

Thanks

Randy

Randy, although some of the reds are indeed clipped I can still see enough detail for my liking. One could always quick mask the areas in question and add a bit of cyan to the red channel in "selective color" - this way wouldn't desaturate all the other beautiful vibrant reds.