The flying mousetrap

[Christopher C.M. Cooke]

This Black Shouldered Kite hovered patiently for 15 minutes before diving into the grass at Edithvale Wetlands then rose and circled me three times as if to show off.

Captured on EOS 1-D MKIII, 300mm f/4 L IS at f/7.1, 1/4000 sec. ISO 640, Pattern metering, Aperture Priority, 0 step.

[Randy Stout]

Chris:

A dramatic moment captured. Great view of the poor mouse. I hear him saying "Oh no, Mr. Bill"
I hope that translates to Australian.

Nice pose on the kite. Well exposed. Perhaps a bit tight re: framing, I might give just a bit more room all the way around.

The eye could stand to be a bit sharper.

The main comment would be about the amount of noise in the sky. I suspect your sharpening was done globally and that has brought up a lot of noise in the sky. I don't obsess about noise, having been a film guy, but I do find this intrusive.

Thanks for posting this one

Cheers

Randy

[Jay Gould]

Chris:

A dramatic moment captured. Great view of the poor mouse. I hear him saying "Oh no, Mr. Bill"
I hope that translates to Australian.

Nice pose on the kite. Well exposed. Perhaps a bit tight re: framing, I might give just a bit more room all the way around.

The eye could stand to be a bit sharper.

The main comment would be about the amount of noise in the sky. I suspect your sharpening was done globally and that has brought up a lot of noise in the sky. I don't obsess about noise, having been a film guy, but I do find this intrusive.

Thanks for posting this one

Cheers

Randy

Randy, please describe the noise in the sky and anything else pertinent to noise in this image.

I understand about sharpening the eye a bit; overall I like the image very much.

Cheers, Jay

[Christopher C.M. Cooke]

Thanks Randy I am attempting to come to grips with Noise Ninja with varying degrees of success and I am still a luddite in regards to CS3 but bit by bit I am learning.

Thanks for your help.

[Ákos Lumnitzer]

Not an often captured moment Chris. :) Well done for that alone. I think what Randy is saying Jay - and he can correct me if I am mistaken - is that the noise is throughout the image. If I were to process this image I would:

Duplicate the original image
Apply noise reduction to the entire duplicate image
Then select the Kite with a magic wand tool around the bird - though this selects the sky and I want to EXCLUDE the sky so
I need to invert the selection before sharpening is applied to only the Kite
SELECT>INVERSE or CTRL+SHIFT+I (shortcut)
Then the marching ants selection should be only around the Kite itself which can then be sharpened without introducing the sharpening artifacts to the sky

That ought to do that. :)

[Christopher C.M. Cooke]

AKOS!

Your blood is worth bottling.

Thank you so much for the system of curing just one of my problems.

The explanation and stepped info is just what I need.

Cheers
Chris

[Ákos Lumnitzer]

Glad to have helped Chris. :)

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Great eye contact and capture. Adding to the sharpening of the bird, I usually don't apply NR to the bird if not absolutely necessary and would only run NR on the BG.

[Christopher C.M. Cooke]

Thanks Axel.

[Mike Tracy]

I shoot a lot of sports at high ISO settings and never have a problem running a noise program on them. But, I have seldom had any luck on birds themselves and as Axel says only when absolutely necessary. The programs tend to completely smooth out and blend the feathers together losing the detail I work so hard to try and capture to begin with.

I will almost always run it on the backgrounds though. It seems the blue skies and green foliage usually present around here manifest the noise more then most colors.

[Christopher C.M. Cooke]

Mike , thanks I am getting more info than I could have hoped for.:)

[Nancy A Elwood]

I use Nik Define 2.0, which is a plug in for CS3, to do noise reduction selectively. It is very easy to use and creates the layers automatically.

[Christopher C.M. Cooke]

Thanks Nancy, I will try it, I am a long way off undertanding NR.

[Judy Lynn Malloch]

Agree with the above comments but congratulate you on great timing and wonderful action and eye contact. Love the caption on this one. Thanks for sharing.

[Christopher C.M. Cooke]

Thank you Judy.

Thanks to all of you who have posted on this subject, as usual on BPN you have picked my level of ability and responded accordingly by giving me much but not too much homework.

Winter is on our doorstep now and with luck it will be a long and WET! one giving mt the time I need to buckle down and get my a** into gear with learning MUCH more about PP.

Maybe, I will be able to give others advice one day, if I can, it will be very much thanks to all of you, your patience, tolerance, advice and wonderful nature.

Cheers
Chris

[Axel Hildebrandt]

How do you sharpen? If the bird is in focus and this is not too much cropped, I think you could get more details.

[Stu Bowie]

Great capture with his catch Chris. Axel and Akos summed it up. Select the BG, do your NR on the BG, invert, sharpen, and this will just sharpen your bird. The amount of sharpening set on your sliders is also important. In unsharp mask, mine are set as amount 125% - radius 0.4 - threshold 0. Hope that helps.

[Christopher C.M. Cooke]

Thanks Stuart

I am writing up all the advice and will gently try to put into action as quickly as my aged grey matter allows.

Cheers
Chris