Mockingbird

[Jay Gould]

Another Jim Neiger first capture for me; I had to do extensive perch cleanup

Camera: 50D
Capture date/time: 29 Sep 09; late afternoon
Light condition: clear
Lens: 300 f/2.8
Focal length: 420mm
Extender: 2.0X
Tube: none
Flash/Comp: no;
ISO: 500
Exp Prog: Manual
Speed: 1/3200 sec
Aperture: f/5.6
Exp Comp: do not recall
Metering: Evaluative
WB: Auto
AF Drive: AI Servo
Tripod: no
Filter: None
Crop: 50%

Processed in LR3beta, CS4; also used Noise Ninja and Pixel Genius Sharpeners

All C&Cs gratefully appreciated!

[Randy Stout]

Jay:

Looks like you are having fun!

Colorful image, interesting perch, good angle of bird in frame and shooting angle.

For me, the bird is just a bit oversharpened. I might consider toning down the brightness of the image just a tiny bit.

From a comp. standpoint, I would prefer to be able to see the entire lower leaf and cluster of berries if you have them, and to try and move the bird to the left a bit in the frame.

Despite the comments, it is a very good looking image, just trying to help you buff it a bit!

Randy

[Randy Stout]

Jay:

I had a second, so took the image into CS4 PS. Made a modest adjustment of the recovery slider in ACR to address some pretty warm areas, and then a very small downward curves adjustment. It gives the sky a bit more color while maintaining the overall luminosity balance pretty well.

Might be worth a quick look.

Cheers

Randy

[Arthur Morris]

Hi Jay, How was the bird attracted to the perch?

Randy, did you mean to post an image?

[Randy Stout]

Artie:

I did do the image as mentioned, but felt the changes were modest enough that I didn't need to post it, hoped the idea would come across. I don't like to clutter up the threads with too many reposts ( I am guilty of this in the past)

Cheers

Randy

[Arthur Morris]

Randy, It sounds as if it would be worth seeing.

[Randy Stout]

Jay:

Per Artie's request.

Lowered overall contrast slightly
In ACR, recovery slider to 33 to help with hot areas on breast and neck
Slight pull down of curves (central)
Minor crop from left and top, added a bit to right.

You can do better on the raw by reconverting with less exposure to help with the whites. Although no longer flashing, they do look overexposed near cheek.

I will still be interested if you have more canvas, to tweak the bottom edge of the frame a bit.

Randy

[Arthur Morris]

Thanks Randy. The repost is an improvement, esp. the apparently reduced SAT. Did you notice if the whites in the chin were clipped?

[Jay Gould]

First, thanks everyone for your thoughtful considerations.

Artie, the bird wasn't "attracted" to the perch. Jim and I were driving down a dirt road and I was shooting out the passenger window. Jim said there is a Mockingbird and I pointed, composed quickly, and pressed the trigger. This image was the best of the bunch.

We did this several afternoons when we finished being on the water. Poor Jim was so fruistrated that we weren´t finding flying raptors. :( We were loudly playing various bird calls, trying to chase owls, and most of the time we only found birds on perchs. Such is life - I´m happy with the outcome of my three days with Jim.

Randy, thanks for the repost. When the time is found I will rework the original so that I can learn from what you did.

As you can see, in order to enlarge the bird I eliminated the lower branch and I removed one of the leaves that was covering the tail. I also eliminated the branch on the right side.

I am open to any and all suggestions; that is the BPN way to improve.

Thanks everyone for taking the time.

[Arthur Morris]

Nice perch for a drive-by. It almost looked like an Alan Murphy perch.... Best not to get in the habit of making such huge crops.... Is the 200 2.8 your longest lens?

Lastly, an original with the bird in the upper right corner might have worked very well and given you more options.... It was nice meeting your bro' in Del Mar.

[Jay Gould]

Nice perch for a drive-by. It almost looked like an Alan Murphy perch.... Best not to get in the habit of making such huge crops.... Is the 200 2.8 your longest lens?

Lastly, an original with the bird in the upper right corner might have worked very well and given you more options.... It was nice meeting your bro' in Del Mar.

Hi Artie, the 300 - not 200 - is my longest lens. I hope to graduate someday :D to the 500. The rumor mill says that Canon is coming out with a new 500 next year and I will probably sell the 300 and get the 500; can´t carry them both.

When you say "an original with the bird in the URC", I assume you are referring to original capture and that the bird was too centered in the original capture. You are right; this bird was all over the place - hence the reason for the high SS. As soon as it would land I would blast away. Thanks for taking the time to look and comment.

[Arthur Morris]

Jeez, my brain was not in gear. I read and meant to type 300 f/2.8 and the suggestion was to put the bird in the upper left hand corner... Sorry about the confusion.

[Jay Gould]

Artie, given the excess of pixels-megapixels we have these days, why is it a problem to make a hugh crop if it enlarges the bird and eliminates extraneous matter in the image?

[Arthur Morris]

Figure out the percentage of your crop and I will let you know. I would guess that you have lost at least 75% of the pixels in the ORIG. Fine for the web, but.... It all comes down to what you want to do with your images.

Also, there are big problems with the chin of the bird in the original post, problems that were likely caused by a lack of pixels. Compare the chin in the original capture with the chin in the original post.... The latter is simply yucky. And yes, that is a technical term.

[Jay Gould]

Figure out the percentage of your crop and I will let you know. I would guess that you have lost at least 75% of the pixels in the ORIG. Fine for the web, but.... It all comes down to what you want to do with your images.

Also, there are big problems with the chin of the bird in the original post, problems that were likely caused by a lack of pixels. Compare the chin in the original capture with the chin in the original post.... The latter is simply yucky. And yes, that is a technical term.

Hello Guru from Bariloche, Argentina - the adventure continues - however, time must be found for education!

Percentage of crop - I am not sure I did this correctly; here are the numbers:

Original Image: 4752 x 3168 = 15,454,336 pixels = 19.8" x 13.2"

Cropped Image: 1699 x 1558 = 2,647,042 pixels = 7.1" x 6.5"

Cropped/Original = 17%

In answer to your question what I intend to do with the images in the future, if and when I reach the point where the images justify display in a fine art website I will create Luvntravln's Luvn Images using my inactive luvntravln.com website.

From a printing point of view, the largest I anticipate every printing given that we live in a caravan/trailer and wall space is nonexistant is an A3 size print: 11.69" x 16.54".

Finally, might you expound upon the "yuckieness" of the chin in the cropped verson since everything is so small in the original version? It seems to me that with birds in flight unless you are really close or using super long lenses on a tripod a substantial crop will always be required. Out of curiosity I have asked Mr. HH Guru Jim Neiger in his Barn Owl post (http://birdphotographers.net/forums/...d=1#post399388 ) how much of a crop he regularly makes with BIF.

Artie, as always, thanks for your assistance; one of the results of this thread is going to be a purchase sooner rather than later of a 500 f/4.

[Arthur Morris]

Yuckiness is closely related to overexposed yet muddy looking.

A dear friend of both Mr. Neiger and me once suggested that we nickname Jim "Farmer Jim" because of his big crops IAC, 17% of the original would qualify as a huge, image quality destroying crop to me.

Stay safe.

[Jim Neiger]

Jay,

I saw your question in the other thread and I thought it was better to answer here. The amount of crop I make varies a great deal. It really depends on the image and the intended use. I try to crop as little as possible and usualy throw away images that require more than a 50% or so crop. I also try to avoid making images that would require a large crop. If I get an image I really like, I may crop it more than 50% and use it for web display only, but this is fairly rare.

For the image in question above, I would suggest cropping less and including more space and foliage.

[Flavio Rose]

The cropped and processed mockingbird image has lots of pixels with R=255 in the chin area. The original image you posted later doesn't. In my personal opinion, pixels with 255 values in a channel are to be avoided except in specular highlights (cf. Digital Basics PDF, Nov. 2009 rev., p. 46). I thus suspect that you over-brightened the image in post.

Leaving this aside, it seems to me a nice image. While the crop is maybe a bit excessive, that seems to me personally less of a problem than over-brightening in post.