Owl and the Mockingbird

[Jim Neiger]

Osceola County, Fl - 1D4, 500mm, hand held, 1/1600, F5, ISO 800, manual exposure
The image was made yesterday afternoon.

[Arthur Morris]

This is likely your best ever; mark it as a BBC entry for next year! Two amazing poses. EXP and sharpness right on (but the mocker's head could use a bit of selective sharpening). What happened in the next instant? (It looks like the mockingbird was toast.)

Would you be kind enough to post a JPEG that represents the original full frame capture?

[Ofer Levy]

This is awesome! Looks like a serious crop (smaller than 30% of the original full frame) by the lack of detail on the mockingbird but the pose and inetraction are priceless.

[Jim Neiger]

Here is the unmodified original full frame shot. I also included a processed version of the next frame.

The Owl was not attacking the Mockingbird. It was the other way around.

[Danny J Brown]

Hi Jim - You've outdone yourself here and that is quite a feat. What a wonderful shot!

DB

[denise ippolito]

Excellent poses on both birds. Nice job w/ the processing, the images held up nicely. I can't believe that the Mockingbird would be getting that close and attacking the owl.

[Troy Lim]

Very nice capture, excellent shot. Thank you for showing the original and the shot after.

[Ofer Levy]

Hi Jim, thanks for sharing the original which confirms my assumption. I wonder how big you can print such a significant crop and still get a great print?

[Lorant Voros]

This is nature photography. What an interaction between the two birds. I think the crop should be ok for a print...it was taken with the 1DMK4. Thanks for sharing this.

Lorant

[Tobias Hayashi]

Awesome work, Jim, two amazing poses. It does look like the owl is going for the mockingbird, but interesting to see that its the opposite. Great work.

[Arthur Morris]

Thanks Jim for posting the original capture and for the additional info. Interesting to note from the full frame image( the one on the top in Pane 4) that the central sensor was not on the subject. The second frame is equally amazing. As for making prints, I am positive that you could make a quality print of at least 13 X 19 inches. I am not seeing the lack of fine detail that Ofer mentions; the images look great. I do think that the crop would not be BBC-acceptable.

Does anyone know how to do the math on the crop???

[Danny Laredo]

Outstanding image.

[Ofer Levy]

Thanks Jim for posting the original capture and for the additional info. Interesting to note from the full frame image( the one on the top in Pane 4) that the central sensor was not on the subject. The second frame is equally amazing. As for making prints, I am positive that you could make a quality print of at least 13 X 19 inches. I am not seeing the lack of fine detail that Ofer mentions; the images look great. I do think that the crop would not be BBC-acceptable.

Does anyone know how to do the math on the crop???

The crop is about 14% of the original. If I get it right it should be about 2.2 megapixels of the original 16.
You can make a print sized 4x6 inch from those 2 megapixels.

[Arthur Morris]

Outstanding image.

Danny, We appreciate your dropping by. When you like an image, please let us know why you like it. Thanks.

[Arthur Morris]

Thanks for the math Ofer. How did you calculate that?

As for prints from small digital files, John Shaw says something to the effect that sharp files from 2 megapixel cameras blow away anything you could do with 35mm film. I am not much into printing but my gut is that folks can do a lot more with relatively small high quality digital files than most folks realize.

[Dennis "Curly" Buchner]

Awesome Jim

[arash_hazeghi]

Crazy pose and interaction, well done, need really quick reflexes for a shot like this.
So the mocking is actually behind the owl(?)

Crop wise it should not be a problem to produce high quality output from a 2 mpixel crop from a high quality sensor like 1DMKIV and 5DMKII *IF* the focus is pin sharp, this harrier shot that I posted a while ago is actually tighter crop than that of Jim's but I made a 8X12 print for an exhibit last month and it turned to be one of the best prints in terms of detail.

I think Jim's RAW file deserves reprocessing

TFS

[Arthur Morris]

Thanks Arash. What's a "nest print"? :)

Why a vote for re-processing?

[stuart wanuck]

very cute but interesting and nice capture

[arash_hazeghi]

Thanks Arash. What's a "nest print"? :)

Why a vote for re-processing?

Hi Artie
My iPhone decided to change best to nest:D
I can see some noise/grain in the photos and a bit of oversharpening that have degraded the IQ a bit as noted by Ofer, but it is a small point given the excellent image. I think it is possible to get better IQ from the RAW.

[Jim Neiger]

The crop is about 14% of the original. If I get it right it should be about 2.2 megapixels of the original 16.
You can make a print sized 4x6 inch from those 2 megapixels.

The cropped image is actualy about 3.27 megapixels or about 20% of the original image size. I could easily make a nice 13x19 print from this if I wanted to.

[Jim Neiger]

Hi Artie
My iPhone decided to change best to nest:D
I can see some noise/grain in the photos and a bit of oversharpening that have degraded the IQ a bit as noted by Ofer, but it is a small point given the excellent image. I think it is possible to get better IQ from the RAW.

If you zoom up any small web image way bigger than it's original display you will see noise and the image will appear oversharpened. The image was processed to be viewed at the web display size.

[Colin Knight]

The cropped image is actualy about 3.27 megapixels or about 20% of the original image size. I could easily make a nice 13x19 print from this if I wanted to.

Jim, I like this image for the reasons mentioned. That owl's eye is especially captivating as he stars down the little pest. Thanks for sharing!

But I'm having trouble understanding your math here. If you're talking about 20% of the original file size, you're saything that's around 980 pixels on the longest side. At a minimum, some say that a 180 PPI image is what you need to send to the printer, which results in about a 5 inch print. So I'm not seeing a 13x19 at all. I'm hoping you can elaborate on that for us please.

[Jim Neiger]

Jim, I like this image for the reasons mentioned. That owl's eye is especially captivating as he stars down the little pest. Thanks for sharing!

But I'm having trouble understanding your math here. If you're talking about 20% of the original file size, you're saything that's around 980 pixels on the longest side. At a minimum, some say that a 180 PPI image is what you need to send to the printer, which results in about a 5 inch print. So I'm not seeing a 13x19 at all. I'm hoping you can elaborate on that for us please.

The dimensions of the cropped image were 2214 x 1476.

[Colin Knight]

Thanks for clearing that up.

Seeing the final dimensions that you posted above, it seems you're limited to roughly 12 inches on the longest side at 180 PPI.

[arash_hazeghi]

If you zoom up any small web image way bigger than it's original display you will see noise and the image will appear oversharpened. The image was processed to be viewed at the web display size.

Thanks Jim, I understand, I was talking about the image at the size presented not zooming up or anything,anyways Ofer and I are too picky about IQ, still a fine shot TFS.

[Arthur Morris]

As presented, the image quality for both looks more than fine to me.

[Jim Neiger]

Thanks for clearing that up.

Seeing the final dimensions that you posted above, it seems you're limited to roughly 12 inches on the longest side at 180 PPI.

The image can be upsized. To give you an idea, my very first published image was a 12x12 shot in a well known calendar. The image was made with a 10D and was cropped to about 35% of it's original 6 MP size or about 2.1 MP. Other photogs in the calendar included Franz Lanting and Art Wolfe. If that image can be published in a high quality calandar at 12x12 then this much larger and higher quality image could certainly make a nice 13x19 print.

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Jim, superb image....and a very informative thread. Thx everyone who chipped in.

Loved the wing spread and the dorsal view.

[Michael Pancier]

great timing Jim. I've noticed similar behavior with smaller birds such as crows chasing the much larger owls. I would have figured that the owls would not be intimated. I've never been able to get the two birds this sharp though. Congrats.