Coppersmith again...

[subhrashis]

OK, another posting...



The nesting coppersmiths seem to have hatched eggs, they keep going to the nest with Ficus fruits, do something very busily, and fly off, haven't caught any sight/sound of little ones...:confused: Lets see...

Took this today... bigger than any i could take so far due to the new lens .. tried minor tweaks in pp, crop, eye lightening, bkgr nr, desat etc, but the processing doesn't seem quite right :(, tried blue photo filter locally in the red head, should it go all over?

D5000, Nikon 70-300 ed vr @ 300mm, Iso 400, F/6.3, 1/200s, spot.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Beautiful bird and interesting how he holds on to the perch. I wish for a bit more eye contact and would tone down the highlights. Since this is a local, maybe you will catch him feed his offspring soon.

[Arthur Morris]

Subhrashis, Welcome. I must agree that the image optimization here is very poor. I love the bird and like the pose. It looks as if you had to lighten the image a lot and that that introduced noise and decreased image quality. And that red crown is too saturated.... See the REDucation threads in the Tutorials forum.

Can you post a JPEG that represents the unadjusted RAW image?

Lastly, I would suggest that you get a copy of my Digital Basics File. See the link on the BAA home page. :)

[subhrashis]

Thanks for your comments Artie!


This is a crop from the original jpeg ( I know that sounds criminal, I set it to raw from jpeg whenever I'm going out , but this time the little guys called me up from studying right in my bedroom, so the camera used the default jpeg.. :()

[Arthur Morris]

Thanks for your comments Artie! This is a crop from the original jpeg ( I know that sounds criminal, I set it to raw from jpeg whenever I'm going out , but this time the little guys called me up from studying right in my bedroom, so the camera used the default jpeg.. :()

Why not leave your camera set to RAW at all times? When you capture in JPEG, contrast is increased and it much more difficult to correct errors of exposure and to decrease contrast. In this image the back of the head is dark and in shadow while the lighter parts were lit directly by the sun. That because the sun was well from your left.... The feathers on the wing and the side of the body look much better in the original than in the repost.

[Arthur Morris]

Ten minutes in Photoshop using a variety of techniques from Digital Basics and beyond....

[subhrashis]

Thanks a lot for your time!
I will set it to RAW permanently... I realize this image has little data, so not much to be done apart from crop, shadow/highlight. desat on red, eye lightening etc... right?
The advantage for me is that this nest is <2 m away from my parents' bedroom window, so i would be looking for more images in softer light... and RAW :)

[Arthur Morris]

YAW. We look forward to seeing more of this bird. And yes, softer light.

[subhrashis]

I posted a recent image of this coppersmith with it's chick at
http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...ad.php?t=62822