It was cloudy and on the verge of drizzle, so I upped the ISO to 800 (about the upper limit for reasonable noise on the 50D), but still it was a tad soft. Any suggestions on the best compromises for such conditions?
Canon 50D, 500 mm f/4L + 1.4 TC, 1/1000 sec at f/7.1, spot focus, with tripod, 50% crop. Focus spot mid bird even with eye.
What you may try after the fact is apply some sharpening using software like Photoshop. Give it a try and see if you like the result.
I like the background, the waves. The wing position I think goes very well with the waves, the overall atmosphere in the background. Full of energy. The only thing I wish were more room at the bottom.
Hi Jack! Something you don't want to shout out across a busy airport terminal. Just kidding. Overcast, and Dunlins flying around. Perfect. In the first place don't be afraid to jack up the ISO! Why? 1]Well, you need a higher shutter speed. Period. 2) noise is a product of underexposure, or dark areas of an image. If you don't have those in the image, there will be far less noise problems. Overexpose! 3) it is true that in high contrast situations(direct sun) there isn't much leeway, and overexposing will likely blow the whites and ruin the image. And the higher ISO images will have plenty of noise in dark areas of the image. The idea is avoid having dark areas in an image! Overexpose so there aren't any. Fix it later post-processing.
Can't do this in high contrast lighting, lose the darks, you blow the lights.
However, in low contrast conditions, you can do this. You are not only less likely to blow the whites, but even the dreaded blinkies on your camera LCD indicating the point of no return are lying to you. Well, not entirely, and you can indeed blow the whites, but not that easily. Even though the graph is to the far right, if you use the recovery slider in ACR, you will be amazed whats still there. Next time it is overcast, try severely overexposing an image using a high ISO, just as a test, bring it home, open in ACR, and play with the recovery slider. A washed out image you normally would throw in the recycle bin, after you adjust to normal exposure, will have hardly any noise and contain a remarkable amount of detail.
Note: as I mentioned this only works in low contrast light(soft light) and will ruin images shot in high contrast light! This is why I said "Overcast, and Dunlins flying around. Perfect." regards~Bill
Hi Jack,
I like the capture...the image is a tad under exposed and a little soft. Bill covered the techs. and gave you good advise. This is a sweet image, would rework and adjust it. Looking forward to your next one...:cool:
Sure wish the AF would have locked better on that bird Love the pose and overall feel !! Would try working some magic in PS ... worth the effort !!!
A while back I check a program that would actually help oof images ... amazingly some were helped !!! Can't recall the name !! .. do remember it had sliders for different amounts of correction !!
I think the image as presented is not a total disaster and can use some sharpening/contrast enhancement to make it look sharper.
No, I did not use FocusMagic. I did summon the help of Nik Software and finished with a touch of highpass filter. Primarily it's simply all about enhancing contrast.
The other way to fix oof photo is to use emboss filter and change the blend mode to hardlight. There's a tutorial to do that on the NAPP website.
Last edited by Desmond Chan; 11-18-2009 at 01:06 AM.
Thanks for the suggestions. I gave Focus Magic a try on their free trial and it works well. There's also another commercial option called Focusfixer if you want to try that.
My original concern was how to get the best focus in limited light, but Desmond's repost was great and offered the challenge of trying to fix it myself with the magic within Photoshop.
So here is my repost in an attempt to fix the oof. The following corrections were made based on information in books by Deke McClellan and Martin Evening. The approach uses an edge mask to limit the effects of the high pass filter and hard light blend mode). The raw image was presharpened with Nik Sharpener Pro with the presharpener option at 100%. (A similar moderate sharpening effect could be achieved with the presharpening option in the camera raw portion of Photoshop) Create the Mask
In the Channels Palette click the blue channel & make a new alpha channel (drag to icon at bottom) This will select the new channel & it will be highlighted in blue
Adjust levels to enhance contrast: whites down to 225, blacks up to 80 (values could be closed in more )
Filters/Stylize/ find edges
Invert (makes edges white instead of black) (ctrl + I)
Filter/Other/Maximum 2 px (broadens edges, but makes them jagged)
Filter/Noise/Median 2 px (rounds off the jagged edges)
Gaussian Blur, 4 px (softens edges) Create the high pass filter with edge mask
In layer palette, select bkgd layer and duplicate it (Ctrl + J & name it "high pass filter"),
apply Filter/other/high pass 3px
Change blend mode to hard light (other overlay modes will also work)
select high pass filter layer and desaturate with Image/adjustments/hue&saturation ( prevents color fringes)
go to channels palette, ctrl click on edge mask channel to load as selection
go to layers palette & then click on add mask icon to add selection as mask.
This was followed with some selective noise reduction of the background.
(although using the edge mask reduces the background noise produced when applying the high pass filter)
Dunlin on a cloudy day
