Grey-streaked Flycatcher (Muscicapa griseisticta)

[John Wright]

An uncommon migrant in my area of southern Japan, so I was pleased to find several pairs this September. Image taken on the flank of a forested mountain.

Canon EOS 7D, EF300mm f/2.8L IS USM + 2x TC, Gitzo 3531 Tripod

1/250 sec at f/6.3; ISO 1600

[Mital Patel]

dear john, this is truly awesome image. like the soft feel of light here. the another option i worked on which i think would be better as what the bird is looking in direction. Also i found that there is more of blue cast on the imge which i tried to recover little.

I think giving it try to remove from raw would of better help.

[John Wright]

Thanks Mital, for taking the time to improve my image. You did a great job! I will try to duplicate it! :)

[John Wright]

Thanks Peter! There is a bit of room to play with in the original RAW file, so I will start over again with these suggestions.

[John Wright]

Here is my revised effort. I rotated the image slightly, cropped it vertically, slightly warmed it, and boosted the blacks and contrast.

[Mital Patel]

john this is pretty good change you made in latest version. what i feel is that you could have run noise reduction on the bg. What White Balance you shot this image?
i havent came across this species on field but what i know from the documentation about the character and phase of bird is you lost its actual colors where as its more of creamish or brownish and here you have some magenta or purple cast in the entire bird.

hope that critique wont make you uncomfortable its just that being a bird watcher i do look on those criteria as well :)

[John Wright]

Hi Mital.....the "as shot" WB temp was 4450, and I boosted this to 4841 to make it warmer and to get rid of the bluish cast. I have LR3 & PSE 8...perhaps I should just find a neutral grey and use that as the WB? Sorry, I am not good at post-processing....I usually just crop and maybe clone out some distractions. I do some NR in LR3, and then sharpen in LR3 - perhaps it is better to do that in PSE where I can separate the bird using layers and just NR the BG?

[Mital Patel]

very true john you know what to do from what you posted. so bettter you should get going with that and make some amazing frames whiich you have already with perfect tones and compo's. keep going buddy and all the best .. try to repost with doing from scratch experimenting to get it perfect tone.

[John Wright]

ok...this time I straightened and adjusted the WB for a neutral grey in LR3, then went to PSE and separated the bird and perch from the bg, cloned out some distractions in the bg, applied NR to the bg, less NR to the bird/perch, then sharpened the bird/perch, then saved and went back into LR3, cropped to a vertical aspect, boosted the clarity and contrast, then did one last sharpening masked to affect only the bird/perch.