This image is what I call an extreme crop, far beyond my usual limit that it is about 5,5Mp (I am using a 12Mp body) but, when the quality of the file is very good (great light, close distance to the subject, clean air, etc) it is amazing the things that you can do with a digital file with just some digital upsizing.
This white stork was posing in the early morning light, in a marine rocky cliff (same place shown in this kestrel image http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...ad.php?t=63609 ) with a fantastic deep blue background, the ocean. The light was so good and the bird so cooperative that I spend a good part of the morning shooting white stork portraits, something that I usually can not do. From the first time I knew that I wanted to get a couple of frames with exactly this composition but soon I realized that it was not possible to get it in the field (not enough focal length and no way to get closer to the bird without disturbance) and I knew that I would need some cropping and, perhaps a file resizing to obtain my composition.
Once at the computer -"ordenador" is how we call computers in Spain, by the way-, and after croping, I ended with a file of about 1-1,5Mp. Then I decided to test some upsizing in photoshop from what in my opinion is a healthy crop. I am not very good with maths do not ask me details about numbers, please :p. From the crop, I ended with an upsized image of 2500x1667 pixels (that is 4,16Mp if I am not wrong) using a plain bicubic resample in photoshop but I think that it can be done better than I did (Fabs, I have to try the Genuine Fractals) and I am really happy with the result.
I think that the quality of the 4,16Mp image is good enough to support a reasonably sized printing and I think that this file can support even more resizing and a higher enlargement.
More details of this crop and the original file are availables at my blog http://lazumaya.blogspot.com/
Regarding the processing job, it is quite simple in this case, just a selective noise reduction to the BG (in a separate layer to avoid loss of details in the contact areas between the BG and the bird), resizing, sharpening on the bird and color adjustment. By the way, the BG is smoother and noise is less visible in the original file than in this jpeg
I would love to hear your thoughts about it and, as always, your comments and suggestions are welcomed
Juan
Nikon D300, AFS Nikkor 500VR+1,4XTC, handheld, manual exposure, f8, 1/640s, ISO500







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