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  1. #1
    John Harrison
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    Thought I would say hi and kick of with an image of a female linnet



    John

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    Lifetime Member Stu Bowie's Avatar
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    Hi John, welcome to the avian forum, and enjoy the ride. A few guide points to help you along. We normally post the technical info from the camera on each image. Camera, lens, shutter speed, aperture, and any other setting you want to share. With reference to the image, Its always ideal to have the subject parallel to the sensor/camera, or at least the head, or even slightly towards you. ( there are lots of pointers in the educational resourses) The comp is good with lots of space to look into, and the bird is well placed in the frame. I do detect some noise in the BG, which can easily be rectified. Hope that helps.

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    Ditto Stu...Welcome John, you will get much friendly and useful advice here....Looking forward to more images!

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    Welcome John. There are several good elements of this image as mentioned- I like the background, perch and general habitat. A couple of things I would suggest is trying a vertical crop to eliminate the right hand OOF gorse, and maybe crop a bit from the bottom too.

    Regarding the head angle, you will see a lot of mention of this here at BPN, and for good reason because it is a critical element of an outstanding wildlife image. In this case the head of the Linnet should be rotated a good 20-30 degrees CW. This will provide good eye contact and a lot of interest in the image. Do you have any with the head turned towards you a little? The other thing I'll mention is that on my calibrated monitor the image has a colour cast- the bird is tinged with magenta. This is easy to get rid of in LAB colour or using other methods.

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    John, welcome! I concur with the good advice already given . . .

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    Welcome John! Ditto above - you will learn loads here in this very friendly forum :)
    Best,
    Nicki

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    Fabs Forns
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    I'll add my welcome to the others. Great critique given above, agree with John's points and hope you can feel right at home here. Looking forward to helping you improve your photographic skills.

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    BPN Member Alan Murphy's Avatar
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    My nits mentioned. If you have the room, I'd also like to see this as a verticle.

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    Publisher Arthur Morris's Avatar
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    I love the perch. Looks like sharpest focus is on the perch itself. See the Head Angle Police thread in Educational Resources. You are, BTW, under arrest :)

    Welcome.
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  10. #10
    John Harrison
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    Thanks everyone for the replies, the exif data of the image is :
    Camera Nikon D3 lens is a Sigma 300-800mm
    Iso 1250
    focal length 800mm
    shutter speed 1/40
    F stop 5.6

    It was a very dull day

    Thanks all for the advice and critique everything helps of course

    I see no magenta colour cast and my monitor is hardware calibrated so thats interesting. Does anyone else see a colour cast?

    here is the male Linnet taken the same early morning the exif info is the same as above


    John

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    Publisher Arthur Morris's Avatar
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    Attached Images Attached Images
     
    Hi John, Can you please explain why you chose to post the image in Pane 1 with the bird facing almost completely away from the viewer rather than the image in Pane 10?

    As to the repost, all that it needed was a close to rule of thirds crop--the space left and above was doing nothing for the image--and some Noise Reduction on the BKGR.
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    Publisher Arthur Morris's Avatar
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    As for the image in Pane 1, the RGB 3s for the average blur are R: 61, G: 73, B: 49. Green high would indicate a green cast which is the opposite of a magenta cast.... And blue low indicates a yellow cast.

    Those #s however are for the average of all of the colors in the image. I am not sure how they relate to only the bird....
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    Attached Images Attached Images
     
    I really like the male Linnet image and Artie's repost makes it a lot stronger.

    I diagnose colour cast in LAB colour rather than RGB, and I look at highlights or neutral light greys to see how far they are away from A=0, B=0, which indicates no colour cast. This avoids the problem of averaging colour across the whole image. I hadn't done this with the original post when I said it looked too magenta to me, but now I have some numbers. The highlight on the breast is running A=+5 (magenta), and B = -11 (blue), so there is actually a magenta and blue cast combined, and the blue cast is heavier than the magenta. Anyway, I converted the image to LAB and ran a Curves on A and B to bring the breast highlights as near as possible to 0,0.

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    Publisher Arthur Morris's Avatar
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    Thanks John for the explanation. I was able to follow everything (even though I have never worked in LAB) but am confused by this: "The highlight on the breast is running A=+5 (magenta), and B = -11 (blue), so there is actually a magenta and blue cast combined, and the blue cast is heavier than the magenta."

    If plus 5 shows a Magenta cast how can minus 11 show a Blue cast? :confused:
    BIRDS AS ART Blog: great info and lessons, lots of images with our legendary BAA educational Captions; we will not sell you junk. 30+ years of long lens experience/e-mail with gear questions.

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    In LAB colour the A channel is a colour range running from green to magenta, and the B channel runs from blue to yellow. White is A = 0, B = 0. Negative values of A are on the green (cool) side and positive values are on the magenta (warm) side; negative values of B are on the blue (cool) side and positive values are on the yellow (warm) side. So a reading of A = +5 and B = -11, means that whites are running magenta (+A) and blue (-B). People comfortable with RGB have trouble with the A and B colour ranges in LAB but they do make sense when you get used to them. You can do a lot of amazing things in LAB colour and I use it all the time now for noise reduction and sharpening, saturation changes, and as here correction of colour casts.

  16. #16
    John Harrison
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    Quote Originally Posted by Arthur Morris View Post
    Hi John, Can you please explain why you chose to post the image in Pane 1 with the bird facing almost completely away from the viewer rather than the image in Pane 10?

    Really just because I liked the image and wanted a bit of feed back on it. I wasn't as aware as everyone here is about head angles, but I am sure it will now stick in my mind:).

    John

    As to the repost, all that it needed was a close to rule of thirds crop--the space left and above was doing nothing for the image--and some Noise Reduction on the BKGR.
    I am not always that keen of the rule of thirds as maybe I should be and quite often like the negative space..

    Ok as to the noise reduction what do you use to reduce the noise? I don't normally use high iso so never needed noise reduction on a regular basis before, I have tried such as noise ninja but find it softens the main subject as well as the background, unless it is masked or the masking brush is used.

    I try to use as few PP steps as possible

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    John- I use Noise Ninja but never on the subject or any important habitat elements. A simple Quickmask in Ps does the trick.

  18. #18
    John Harrison
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    Quote Originally Posted by John Chardine View Post
    John- I use Noise Ninja but never on the subject or any important habitat elements. A simple Quickmask in Ps does the trick.
    Thanks John, I have just been reading a few articles on noise reduction, all help is good help

    Cheers John

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