Black-capped Chickadee

[Eric Patdu]

Taken from my backyard.

C&C is very much welcome.

Black-capped Chickadee (Poecile atricapillus) L 5¼" (13cm)
Shooting Info: September 5, 2010, Canon XSi + EF-S 55-250mm f4-5.6 IS, 250mm, f/5.6, 1/30 sec, ISO 800, -0.3 exposure compensation, 2.5m, hand held with support

[Thanaboon Jearkjirm]

Love the HA, the gripping pose and nice job with exposure on getting details in both black and white. I might run a round of NR just on the background.

[Julie Kenward]

Eric, these are so hard to get right and you did a very nice job. There black eye in the middle of the black face makes me crazy most days - if you don't get a catch light to show up the eye gets totally lost. Bravo for you for getting it right.

Two suggestions here...open a levels adjustment layer and then hit the "auto" button and watch the slight tonality change to the image. It instantly pulls the whites up and the darks down just a tiny bit but it really crisps up the photo. I almost always start with an "auto" levels hit just to see what it does and about half the time it is right on the money.

Also, I think you could take a small sliver off the right side of the frame. I tried a straight 8x10 crop and it worked beautifully. Your eye is just a tiny bit below the ROT's position but it's so close it's no biggie. If you do have a little more room at the top I'd add a slice there as well.

Yes, the BG is dark so add some NR but make sure you mask out the bird so you don't lose the details in the feathers.

If you have any questions let me know. Again - congrats for a decent exposure on this hard to photograph bird.

[Eric Patdu]

Thanks Thanaboon and Julie. Will try to re-process this as you suggested and post it here for your comments. :)

[Eric Patdu]

I tried to reprocess the Chickadee and this is what I came up with. I'm not sure if I overdid some things so C&C is very much welcome.

I'm having a problem with CS5. When the image is in PS, the colors are lighter. But when I save them as JPG, the output looks more darker and contrasty.

[Julie Kenward]

I do like it but you're right - it's noticeably darker. I've never had this happen so I'll have to defer to someone else who might understand what's going on. Are you saving them as SRGB or RGB? If nobody here gives you an answer post a question on the Digital Workflow forum...I'm sure someone there will be able to help.

[Eric Patdu]

Thanks Julie! When you say you like it, does that mean that you like this PP better than the first one? Will try to ask on that forum when nobody gives a solution to my PS problem.

[Julie Kenward]

I like everything except for how dark it appears - I cannot for the life of me figure out why it's doing that! Did you notice a large change when you tried the "auto levels" adjustment? Mine only made a slight shift in the whites and darks and this appears to be more than what my correction did.

[Eric Patdu]

Hello Julie,

Thanks! Did not do the "auto levels" adjustment as it blew the whites and the blacks. Tried to re-process it from scratch and came up with this.

It looked much darker than the first one but I felt I have overdid the processing. I still don't have a monitor calibrator so I really can't tell if this is just right or not. :)

[Myer Bornstein]

The repost is much to dark overall I would select out the BG and and darken it only. Also I would make Copyright smaller and less intrusive

[Eric Patdu]

Thanks for the comment Myer. I guess darkening the BG would increase the contrast on the subject. Will also try to make the copyright less intrusive in my succeeding posts. :)