Black-winged stilt @3060mm
A few weeks ago, I tried stacked converters on my 600 to get a tight portrait of one of these stilts. I took about 10 pictures with manual focus and half of them were quite good.
Here is one of my favourites :
D2Hs, 600 VR + TC-17EII + Kenko 2x, 1/100", f/16, @2020mm (3060mm equivalent 24x36), 200 ISO, tripod. Full frame.
You can see the distance between the camera and the bird here : http://i50.tinypic.com/1585jxe.jpg
Thanks for looking.
Last edited by Thonnaksar NOP; 01-28-2010 at 04:01 AM.
Nice one mon ami, at Mason Park of course. :D
I think considering the stack and FL used, the combination of shutter speed and all the optical things happening this is one great and very useable image with some incredibly good detail. I would just add a sliver of canvas on top to loosen the comp and maybe sharpen the eye just a tad more, but I am at work and the monitor is a bit "how you goin".
Well done mon ami! Very well done. :)
Man, with "only" 400mm and at that distance from the bird I'm just enjoying the scenery, or creating birdscapes:). With ISO 200 and f/16 your not giving yourself much room for shutter speeds...
As posted it could use a bit more sharpening, and yes the comp is quite tight at top.
I think it looks remarkably good considering the stacked converters. I would give it a bit more room and might lighten/remove the vertical line crossing the bill.
Very good image with the stacking.
I think in the states our stilt have more black around the head this this one.
Thanks guys for your comments !
I tried to remove the vertical line crossing the bill, add more canvas on top of the head in Photoshop CS3 and apply a little bit more sharpening. I don't have the right skill in CS3 to do this but it does look different now...
Repost
Tres bien mon ami. :) I like it, your skills are more than good.
If you want to, perhaps remove one catchlight and tidy up the bill in front of the nostril, and even remove the white speck on the back of the neck.
Cheers mate.
All done ! : it looks very clean to me now, unless...:DOriginally Posted by Ákos Lumnitzer
Repost 2
Handsome bird. I like the final product the best (#3). I think that adding space helped the comp out a lot.
Yes, your addressing of the few little details has completed a wonderful image mon ami. Thanks for sharing. :)
This one is a very noticeable job considering how bad stacked converters work on the Nikon gear. I see why you are happy with the result :)
I took the freedom to repost your image with additional cleaning job on the BG (mainly around the bill), sharpenning for web presentation and levels adjustment in the eye and blacks of the neck. By the way, it is surprising to me that with such magnification my usual noise reduction settings doesn´t work very well, I even tried Gaussian blur in the BG and it seems to work different :confused:
Anyhow, a very encouraging result with such a magnification power :)
Thanks Juan for your repost !
I love the detail in the dark area and overall brightness.
The original image posted has been post-processed in NX2 with Sharpness=0 (in Picture Control), Noise Reduction=OFF and USM=45/5/4.
Which software did you use for your repost, Juan ?
You are wellcome and thanks for showing us your results with stacked converters :)
For my files I use Adobe RAW converter and CS4 8but the method that I used here is excatly the same if you use CS2 or CS3).
In this case I have been working with a low resolution jpeg and there is a lot of image degradation in my result but it can help you to understand what I did and to repeat with high resolution tiffs converted from the RAW file.
I would love to explain all the process but I have done several times in BPN and it is not easy for a non english speaker like me so I am going to refer to the following link in which I gave more details about how I work (http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...ad.php?t=11412).
From the original file I made the following layers:
1) Noise reduction in the BG and some cloning job
2) Selective levels adjustment in the blacks of the neck
3) Selective levels adjustment on the eye.
This is the layer structure that I used. It may seems a bit complicated but it is not with some practice. I invested about five minutes in the image (but a lot of time to explain how I did it :D).
Once the job is done I merge all layers except the first one (the one in which I applied noise reduction and cloning). this way I have two layers, the main one, and another one on top with the BG. Then, I sharpen the main layer but not the layer on top. In this image I used the following settings: amount 115, radius 0,3 and threshold 0
Of course, I do not apply this method to all the images I made but only to the ones that are good enough for the investment of time
hope this helps
PS: By theway, I would love to enjoy this image at 100%
Thanks a lot for your time to explain everything and for the link as well, Juan !
I have a lot to learn about Photoshop.
Here is the RAW file for you to play with :cool: : http://hotfile.com/dl/26487577/38643..._6731.NEF.html
Have a great day !
You are wellcome and thanks for the file :). At web size is very easy to show a sharp image coming from an unsahrp original file. I have been playing a bit with the RAW that you posted and it seems pretty sharp for me considering the huge amount of glass that you were using :D
Of course it is not as sharp as an image produced with the bare lens but it is really useable. The performance of teleconverters is a bit tricky and unpredictable. I have tested different lenses with the same teleconverter (Nikon 2X-TCII) producing very different results. With one 500VR lens, the sharpness was killer, in the same league of f the 300VR+2XTC. In two other 500VR lenses, the results were very poor (your results with two stacked converters is far better) and with another one 500Vr lens the IQ was really, really poor.
I will send you the processed RAW ;)
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