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Thread: Owl and the Grackle

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    Lifetime Member Jim Neiger's Avatar
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    Default Owl and the Grackle


    Osceola County, Fl - 1D4, 500mm, hand held, 1/1000, F4, ISO 1000, manual exposure
    Last edited by Jim Neiger; 05-18-2010 at 06:43 AM.
    Jim Neiger - Kissimmee, Florida

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    Another great action shot with both birds in focus! Well done! Too bad the owl is headed away from you.

    My only big concern is the noise here. It seems to need another round of NR. Given the Mark IV's noise performance, I'm guessing this is a fairly heavy crop?

    TFS!

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    Lifetime Member Jim Neiger's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by clknight View Post
    Another great action shot with both birds in focus! Well done! Too bad the owl is headed away from you.

    My only big concern is the noise here. It seems to need another round of NR. Given the Mark IV's noise performance, I'm guessing this is a fairly heavy crop?

    TFS!
    This is not a particularly large crop. Where are you seeing noise?
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  4. #4
    Danny J Brown
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    Oh boy, that owl is getting harassed by everything. Makes for some awesome shots though. Background provides some nice contrast on this one.

    DB

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    Great BIF action shot. Wish for a better head angle though.

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    Hey Jim, nice action shot. I am seeing some noise in the Grackle. Oh, BTW, thats a grackle and not a cowbird:D.

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    great flight shot from a great series, owl is being freaked out!

    Color noise is evident on the grackle and under the wing area of the owl as well as BG and it hurts IQ. MKIV is clean at ISO 1000 but do need to apply some chroma noise reduction before sharpening.
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    Lifetime Member Jim Neiger's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by arash_hazeghi View Post
    great flight shot from a great series, owl is being freaked out!

    Color noise is evident on the grackle and under the wing area of the owl as well as BG and it hurts IQ. MKIV is clean at ISO 1000 but do need to apply some chroma noise reduction before sharpening.
    I can see a bit of noise in the underwing of the Owl, but the Grackle has bright colors that are normal for it's appearance. I see a bit of noise in the grackles far wing, but it's hard to tell the noise from the ragged feathers. I don't like to apply noise reduction to the subject because it causes loss of detail. I do apply NR to the BG.
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    Super Moderator arash_hazeghi's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Neiger View Post
    I can see a bit of noise in the underwing of the Owl, but the Grackle has bright colors that are normal for it's appearance. I see a bit of noise in the grackles far wing, but it's hard to tell the noise from the ragged feathers. I don't like to apply noise reduction to the subject because it causes loss of detail. I do apply NR to the BG.

    Jim, its your image and your call whether the noise is too much or not,the red speckles visible on the grackles is not a natural feature but color noise that has been sharpened, but again it's up to you :) I just thought I'd mention this because all of the otherwise perfect images in these series had visible noise.

    Color noise reduction does not affect image detail, only luminance noise reduction softens feather detail. If you are interested I recommend you use Canon DPP sw with chrominance NR set to 10 and luminance set to 0, it will get rid of color speckles without affecting detail, there is similar setting in LR too.

    Best,
    Last edited by arash_hazeghi; 05-17-2010 at 10:10 PM.
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    Lifetime Member Jim Neiger's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by arash_hazeghi View Post
    Jim, its your image and your call whether the noise is too much or not,the red speckles visible on the grackles is not a natural feature but color noise that has been sharpened, but again it's up to you :) I just thought I'd mention this because all of the otherwise perfect images in these series had visible noise.

    Color noise reduction does not affect image detail, only luminance noise reduction softens feather detail. If you are interested I recommend you use Canon DPP sw with chrominance NR set to 10 and luminance set to 0, it will get rid of color speckles without affecting detail, there is similar setting in LR too.

    Best,
    Arash,

    The red color you see on the back of the grackles head and the side of it's body are natural features of the bird. There is also some bluish-green on it's body. I have several shots of this bird and I can clearly see this in the raw files. There is some visible color noise on the wing tips of both wings.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Neiger View Post
    Arash,

    The red color you see on the back of the grackles head and the side of it's body are natural features of the bird. There is also some bluish-green on it's body. I have several shots of this bird and I can clearly see this in the raw files. There is some visible color noise on the wing tips of both wings.
    Jim I am talking about the fine colored garin not the red patch. If possible post a 100% crop of the grackle and I can show you what it will look like with color NR.
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    Noise smoise...that image kicks butt. Jim, you are the master of the air-to-air avian combat genre. Superlative image.

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    Jim,

    Arash has addressed the noise that I was referring too. I also have to agree with him that some amount of chroma NR and zero luminance NR in DPP is a part of my workflow as well, since it retains detail.

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    Jim, regarding noise and detail retention, here's a 100% crop of an image taken at ISO 800. Chroma NR applied in DPP, no luminance. Before/after. I don't believe there's any noticeable loss of detail at all, while the noise cleans up perfectly well.


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    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Neiger View Post
    This is not a particularly large crop. Where are you seeing noise?
    I see some around the BG.
    What kind of call do you have? Seems like very effective. I don't have any good calls for GHO. If you could help, I appreciate it.

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    Lifetime Member Jim Neiger's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by arash_hazeghi View Post
    Jim I am talking about the fine colored garin not the red patch. If possible post a 100% crop of the grackle and I can show you what it will look like with color NR.
    I'm leaving town for my Osprey Heaven workshop in a couple of hours, so I don't have time to do the 100% crop of the Grackle. Feel free to play with and re-post the image from this thread. That is more relevant anyway. We are talking about an image that was cropped, re-sized, and processed for web display. It would be nice to compare changes to the image with the original image when displayed at the same size on the web. I'm interested in what is visible without blowing the image up to a larger size than the intended display size.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Troy Lim View Post
    I see some around the BG.
    What kind of call do you have? Seems like very effective. I don't have any good calls for GHO. If you could help, I appreciate it.
    I used heavy NR on the BG. I use the Stokes calls, but there is much more to it than just playing the call.
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    great action shot Jim! reminds me of the drongos harassing the raptors here in the Southern tip of Africa :)
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    Hi Jim,
    Here is a quick try with the JPEG but I think it will be better if you start from RAW or full size file at least since the small size is already compressed...



    Best,
    Last edited by arash_hazeghi; 05-18-2010 at 10:14 AM.
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    Sorry if this is a stupid question, but could someone tell me what DPP is? A noise reduction program? I am not good with initialisms.
    Chris Zink

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    Looking good on the repost, Arash. Agree though, it would be better to start from RAW.

    Chris, "DPP" is Canon's RAW conversion software. It stands for Digital Photo Professional. The chroma NR is quite good actually, IMO.

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