Nion d200 600 mm TC 1.4
Tripod
F 5.6 1/1600
0 EV Meter matrix ISO 400
Early afternoon light
My critique: Perch ugly but there were no trees
Background too monchromatic Maybe should have used smaller apeture then maybe more character in the BG
Digital workflow question. To post for the web I reduce the image size in steps per previous suggestion made here, ie. 3000 to 2000 to 1000 using bicubic sharper setting, but it appears to me that causes the image to look oversharpened.
Hi Ray - agree about the perch but no control over that.
Contrasting colours tend to work well together,colours that are next to each other on the colour wheel maybe not so well, many strive to get a nice clean one colour background like you have here.
Like the eye contact, a little too centred for my personal tastes if you have more space all around a different crop maybe along the lines of the rule of thirds might help.
Exposure and details look good.
Generally I use save for web and devices in photoshop - optimised to a file size of 200k - Made a action and just run that when I want to post a image.
Hi Ray. Good bird. Exposure looks good as does HA. Agree with Lance about a bit more room all around. Sharpening has been my nemesis; but I've had better luck once I started to use Lance's suggestion of 'save for web' optimized for 200k. I keep a Master File of the large unsharpened TIFF, convert it to jpeg as above (sometimes having to reduce file size in stages first), and only then do I sharpen the smaller file while monitoring the effects at 100% image size. I still don't get perfect results and others will have different work flows, but this has been starting to work for me.
A very pretty Bluebird, Ray and while the bg is uniform, that's lots better than one with lots of twigs, limbs, etc. My workflow is like Lance and Bill's except that I've never reduced the size in stages; just go right down to 1000 or 800 for vertical.
Looks like some selective sharpening might help - on-balance nice mage. Might move it off-center some.
I reduce file size as noted by Katie, then save as noted by Lance. Then sharpen the sized image, zoom to view for cloning and other errors too. I agree with Bill as well regarding the TIFF image to save a master file.
Thanks to everyone for the comments and suggestions.
I will try to recrop. I am slowly understanding the rule of thirds. I have read the section in Art's book at least 3-4 times.
Moutain bluebird
