
Originally Posted by
Arthur Morris
Hi Norm,
re:
I agree with the others that this is another most attractive image. But since you have said that we should not be shy, and that all comments are welcome, I offer the following constructive comments.
I do try to encourage folks to share their honest opinions and oftern learn a ton by posting images here and carefully considering the comments and suggestions. When I feel that folks are wrong however, I will let them know :)
You applied +2/3 compensation in an effort to bring out the dark feather detail...
That statement is not accurate: I added 2/3 of a stop of light to move the histogram to the far right. With some of the blacks shaded and others sunlit, I knew that there was no hope of having detail in the shaded blacks.
but your effort was not entirely successful; on my calibrated Apple Cinema monitor there is little feather definition on the lower region of the breast and the tail.
That would be as expected; it is unrealistic to hope to show detail in shaded black areas while maintaining detail in sunlit areas of bright yellow.
Furthermore, as a result of the effort to capture the dark feather detail, the left portion of the upper, yellow part of the breast appears blown out and devoid of detail on my monitor.
Though the TIFF shows no clipping at all, the JPEG does show clipping in the areas you mention. I prepare my JPEGs generically and at times the compression causes an unwanted increase in contrast. With the TIFF I have tried to balance getting detail in the sunlit yellows while revealing detail in other areas.
Perhaps nothing further can be done with such color and brightness extremes in the subject, but I would go back to the RAW image, select the troublesome regions, and apply the relevant Photoshop tools in an effort to improve the image further.
For the most part I did that on my original optimization. And to artificially lighten the shaded blacks would yield a muddy extremely noisy look.
Of course the best approach would have been to do compensation bracketing to accurately capture the light and dark regions separately, and to then combine the results in an HDR image.
Norm, please do not take this personally but that suggestion has no basis in reality. HDR may be great for landscapes but simply does not work with birds or wildlife as the latter are living, breathing creatures that are alway in motion (except perhaps while they are sleeping). I have tried what you suggested and the images never ever register. A possiblitly along the lines of what you suggest would be to capture several different exposures and then use a series of Quick Masks to borrow and improt the unusually light and dark areas but this would require that the bird remained fairly still for a bit. This bird was in constant motion.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.