I went down to the local park to see if I could capture some action. I found at ISO 400 it needed very little sharpening before it went OTT and the sharpening soon made the pale plumage too bright, so I have applied a little selective sharpening. I wonder if I have not quite got the cheek right, in Adobe RAW I used the Recovery slider to ensure nothing was blown and I also used shadow Highlights (maybe overdid a little on the highlights). I did not sharpen the water at all.
Camera Model Canon EOS 50D
Gitzo Tripod Mongoose head
Firmware Firmware Version 1.0.7
Copyright Notice Copyright: Jon Ashton
Shooting Mode Aperture-Priority AE
Tv( Shutter Speed ) 1/2000
Av( Aperture Value ) 6.3
Metering Mode Evaluative Metering
Exposure Compensation -2/3
ISO Speed 400
Lens EF500mm f/4L IS USM
Image Quality RAW
Flash Off
White Balance Mode Auto
AF Mode AI Servo AF
Nice drama in the image. IMO, the entire image might benefit from some contrast adjustments. The neck and head could be masked and promoted to a layer; in that layer perhaps a little curves could be used to bring out some dynamic range that appears to still be there. ( if you have lightroom 2.5 or better, there is a nice little applet that allows you to mask areas such as these and apply exposure adjustment, contrast adjustment and blending, all before the image is imported into Photo Shop). I think you were judicious in not applying sharpening to the water; it might have "speculation" of the brighter portions. FWIW ;) Good image
Thank you for your suggestions, here is a repost taking on board what you said, I saturated a little more and used curves on the head and neck, and a quick dose of Selective colour. This time I did not use Shadow & Highlights at all, previously I used to to quieten the chest and cheek patch. I created a mask for the goose and did not sharpen the RAW file at all but sharpened the (goose only) 1024px image with 2 rounds of Unsharp Mask 125/0.2/0
Last edited by Jonathan Ashton; 03-26-2010 at 11:34 AM.
Canada Goose
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