Yellow Warbler

[Ben Egbert]

Found this Yellow Warbler along the Spokane River just east of Spokane. I am aware of the obscured tail. I have other shots with the tail clear, but none with such a good HA and singing pose. I cloned out one branch that intersected his breast. I have played with cloning out the leaf at lower left, but it looks hooky and I have no source to repair the bit of missing tail that would be left after clone.

Like to hear any and all comments, including exposure, sharpness etc. Getting a clear shot is largely a matter of luck, but when I get lucky, I want to nail the technical’s when that happy event comes. I started with ISO400, and had enough light that I was able to dial down to 100 ( I hate noise). I was using a Gitzo tripod, Acraswiss and Wimberly Sidekick, so I felt the shutter speed was fine.

I also considered a tighter crop, cutting off those branches on the right, but did not like them exiting the frame that way.

50D, 500f4+1.4X ISO100 F7.1 1/500 sec

[Cheryl Flory]

oh my!! just love that pose! what a happy cheerful image! Not an easy job to get this small birds in the clear!

[Jeff Cashdollar]

Nice shot, steep angle but with a catch like this we take what we can get.

Generally speaking, I would not use ISO=100, too restrictive and you can always use more shutter speed when shooting a focal length of 700MM at 1/500 (still a decent speed). Would open up aperture if TC is supportive for same reason. if you had plenty light, I would have used it to increase shutter speed not decrease ISO to 100 (maybe 200 at best).

Composition wise, if the leaf and the bottom twig could be removed it would be stronger image - nice picture as it, beautiful bird, great work.

[Thanaboon Jearkjirm]

Very nice singing pose, I really like how you can see all the details inside the beak. Sharpness looks fine to me. Exposure wise I think the image is overexpose a bit, there are lost highlight in the red channel around the breast area, at least according to ViewNX. Not sure about Canon, but for my camera highlight are easier to get lost if use ISO lower than the base ISO, is 100 your base ISO?

[Ben Egbert]

Thanks, Cheryl, they are hard to catch without a busy background.

[Ben Egbert]

Nice shot, steep angle but with a catch like this we take what we can get.

Generally speaking, I would not use ISO=100, too restrictive and you can always use more shutter speed when shooting a focal length of 700MM at 1/500 (still a decent speed). Would open up aperture if TC is supportive for same reason. if you had plenty light, I would have used it to increase shutter speed not decrease ISO to 100 (maybe 200 at best).

Composition wise, if the leaf and the bottom twig could be removed it would be stronger image - nice picture as it, beautiful bird, great work.

Thanks for those nice comments.

I probably could have stayed at ISO200 and let the shutter speed increase. Sometimes I like f5.6 to make the bird stand out from the background. I had not yet arrived at that conclusion when I shot this however. I use ISO200 without NR if the crop is not too tight, but need NR at ISO400 and up on this camera.

[Ben Egbert]

Very nice singing pose, I really like how you can see all the details inside the beak. Sharpness looks fine to me. Exposure wise I think the image is overexpose a bit, there are lost highlight in the red channel around the breast area, at least according to ViewNX. Not sure about Canon, but for my camera highlight are easier to get lost if use ISO lower than the base ISO, is 100 your base ISO?

Thanks Thanaboon. ISO100 is my base ISO. I did not see any blown red channel, but I am just learning about this and need to go check it again. This image was processed in July before I started visiting here. I had been doing test shots and felt that ISO100 provided the sharpest cleanest image if the shutter speed was fast enough.

I find these singing birds need 1/250th minimum to freeze the beak, so I like to stay above 1/320 or so for some margin.

[Lance Peters]

Hi Ben - Nice image - the histogram does show the red channel clipped.

Have a look at this thread for info.....

http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...ad.php?t=35243

Looking forward to seeing more.

[Gus Cobos]

Hi Ben,
I agree with the techs. and good advise given...the thing that catches my eye is the steep capture angle, and the out of focus leaf on the lower left of the frame...looking forward to your next one...:cool:

[Ben Egbert]

Hi Ben - Nice image - the histogram does show the red channel clipped.

Have a look at this thread for info.....

http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...ad.php?t=35243

Looking forward to seeing more.

Ok, I just looked at this thread, I had read it last week, but did not think this image had any blown areas. Breeze shows nothing flashing save the catchlight. My eye does not see it either. So I pulled up the PSD and checked. 234 is the highest level in red. On a hunch I ran my sRGB conversions and there it was, same spot was 253, hardly blown however because it is still just a small dot in the image.

Still, I am not sure how you see this with the eye. I normally have my monitor at 90cd/mm^2, only way to match the printer. But I am now all the way up to 110 cd/mm^2.

Of course monitor brightness does not effect the color, but it does effect the perception of brightness.

[Ben Egbert]

Hi Ben,
I agree with the techs. and good advise given...the thing that catches my eye is the steep capture angle, and the out of focus leaf on the lower left of the frame...looking forward to your next one...:cool:

Yep, that leaf is of course why I posted it here rather than the regular forum. It is a damaged image because of the leaf. You either get a high angle shot like this, or a shot into the middle of a tree when they are lower and a really messy background. Unless you are incredibly lucky, and then maybe a fence post or some other perch.

[Alfred Forns]

Hi Ben


The main issue with the image is the high angle !! Do have to agree with Jeff on the ISO part In this case you have clear sky behind and not much need to keep at 5.6 for the bg !!! I also have and use a 50D and don't find 400 problematic, do use noise reduction software or selective smoothing all but the bird for noise.

Regarding the clipping you will find the camera does the overcooking all on its own for the the reds and some yellows !!

PS wise if you are going to get rid of the leaf at the bottom, would also take the end of the perch, sort of grabs my attention !! ... lot of good things in this image Looking forward to the next one !!!

[Ben Egbert]

Hi Ben


The main issue with the image is the high angle !! Do have to agree with Jeff on the ISO part In this case you have clear sky behind and not much need to keep at 5.6 for the bg !!! I also have and use a 50D and don't find 400 problematic, do use noise reduction software or selective smoothing all but the bird for noise.

Regarding the clipping you will find the camera does the overcooking all on its own for the the reds and some yellows !!

PS wise if you are going to get rid of the leaf at the bottom, would also take the end of the perch, sort of grabs my attention !! ... lot of good things in this image Looking forward to the next one !!!

What I need to learn is two things.

One, that others see a blown red channel, this is good to know.

Two, how to detect that at my end, because I am not at this time.

The raw file is absolutly free of this, as is the PSD, it is only when I convert to sRGB that I get anything approaching 255 in the red channel and the spot is too small to see with the naked eye. The PSD is only 234 after doing my processing and brightening the image enough for printing. It is even less at conversion.

My post processing is very heavily influenced by printing, which requires a much brighter image than WEB. So I need a different one for web presentation. But, my monitor even set bright does not have any telltale sign of this. So probably what I really need is a special calibration for web use. By the way, my monitor is wide gamut not sRGB.

[Thanaboon Jearkjirm]

You can detect the blown out channel in camera right after you have taken the pictures. I do not own 50D but I highly believe that there is a menu that allow you to see the color channel histogram (red, blue and green). There you can check if any of the histogram is push to the right. Also you can set the camera to blink on the LCD the area of the blown channel.

For your picture I used ViewNX (which is a Nikon program for a quick view of images) to check for blown out channel. It showed me the histogram of each color channel and the over all historgram. Here is the histogram of your picture.


I noticed that red is push up against the right side, so I use the option to view over blown area and below is what I get.

The red dots show blown red channel area, which is around the breast.

[Ben Egbert]

Here is the original, I made no changes to exposure at conversion and dropped blacks to 1. Otherwise no post prossing other than downsizing.

In Photoshop, the brightest pixel is 217.

[Thanaboon Jearkjirm]

I tired open your original photo, this time with photoshop. The histogram still show red channel push to the right.


Just for fun, I was playing around with the RGB curve and tried to pull the curve all the way down. I might be wrong here but if there is no blown out highlight the image should go black (this is just a guess) but this is what I got.


Maybe the blown red came from saving for web, can you show me your color histogram of the original image.

[Ben Egbert]

You can detect the blown out channel in camera right after you have taken the pictures. I do not own 50D but I highly believe that there is a menu that allow you to see the color channel histogram (red, blue and green). There you can check if any of the histogram is push to the right. Also you can set the camera to blink on the LCD the area of the blown channel.

For your picture I used ViewNX (which is a Nikon program for a quick view of images) to check for blown out channel. It showed me the histogram of each color channel and the over all historgram. Here is the histogram of your picture.


I noticed that red is push up against the right side, so I use the option to view over blown area and below is what I get.

The red dots show blown red channel area, which is around the breast.

Thanks for doing this, I learned something here. I don't have your Nikon program, and can't view this in camera since the card is long since wiped. But I can look at the histogram in Photoshop.

The 50D has an RGB histogram and I use it. My raw file is well to the left. So is my PSD. But the sRGB jpg does show the red channel clipping as you show here.

I guess I need to look at this after conversion to sRGB and learn how much room to leave before converting. I normally do my processing in Prophoto RGB.

[Ben Egbert]

I tired open your original photo, this time with photoshop. The histogram still show red channel push to the right.


Just for fun, I was playing around with the RGB curve and tried to pull the curve all the way down. I might be wrong here but if there is no blown out highlight the image should go black (this is just a guess) but this is what I got.


Maybe the blown red came from saving for web, can you show me your color histogram of the original image.

When I pull up the raw, it shows plenty of room. I have no idea how to make or post a screen shoot. Maybe there is something in the educational forum.


But what I can do is pull this same unprocessed jpg into photoshop and see is the red channel changes. I must leave for a while, but this is an interesting problem, and I hope will shed light on this.

Ok, here is what I did, I pulled up the raw, looked at the historgram. I then set just the red channal and used threshold, I can elimnate all of the image at 234. As soon as I hit the sRGB web conversion action, it goes into clipping.

[Thanaboon Jearkjirm]

When I pull up the raw, it shows plenty of room. I have no idea how to make or post a screen shoot. Maybe there is something in the educational forum.


But what I can do is pull this same unprocessed jpg into photoshop and see is the red channel changes. I must leave for a while, but this is an interesting problem, and I hope will shed light on this.

Ok, here is what I did, I pulled up the raw, looked at the historgram. I then set just the red channal and used threshold, I can elimnate all of the image at 234. As soon as I hit the sRGB web conversion action, it goes into clipping.

So the clipping came from web conversion, glad that you found out the problem. Maybe try convert to TIFF first then use save for web in photoshop, might solve the problem, not sure though. http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...read.php?t=839

The way I post screen shot was capture them with snag it, post it in flickr then copy the link there and post here.

[Ben Egbert]

Yellow correction image

I experimented and discovered that by setting the exposure -.35, I could get a final sRGB jpg that just touches 255 in one tiny spot by the beak. I tried reducing luminance and sat of both red and yellow channels in the HSL box during conversion, no luck even at -60. I tried aRGB, for conversion, and it is no different than if I do my conversion in Prophoto RGB.

This image is way too dark. Anything I try to brighten it up a bit blows the red channel. If I do levels or curves and adjust to 245 it will clip after conversion.

I also tried the convert for WEB as instructed in the tutorial, I get the same results.

Is this one still blowing the yellows? How does it look on your monitor?