Spotted Dove

[Munish Kaushik]

Camera Canon EOS 7D
Exposure 0.001 sec (1/2000)
Aperture f/7.1
Focal Length 400 mm
ISO Speed 800
Exposure Bias +1 EV

80% of the original frame. Noise reduction in the BKGR & Removed some unwanted branches from here & there.

C&C is most welcome.

Regards,
Munish Kaushik
www.facebook.com/Kaushik.Munish
www.seenwild.com

[Arthur Morris]

Nice bird. EXP workable but the image as presented is too light. Tree perch is distracting and the angle is steep.... Could be lots sharper.

[Munish Kaushik]

Artie,

Thanks a ton for the feedback.

Agree on the part that the image is light. I tried working on it but couldn't make it darker. Not sure what to do in these scenarios. I have many images which are shot against blue sky and then the challenge comes to when I am editing those. If I try changing the curves a bit it adversely affects the sky making it look unreal with a different tone altogether.

On the sharpness front, I keep the in camera sharpness to max (which is 7 when seen in DPP) but if the ISO is high this setting results in a lot of noise. In this case, ISO is 800 so there is a bit of visible noise when I zoom @ 100%. It becomes worse when I apply some USM in photoshop. I have tried various combination but USM does take some of the quality of the picture in my case.

Please guide.

Regards,
Munish Kaushik

[Munish Kaushik]

Here's one more version of the pic. I tried to remove the extra branches out there and also did some cropping.



but the lightness & sharpness are still the issues that I have not able to correct.

Regards,
Munish Kaushik

[Munish Kaushik]

Hi Artie,

I am still working on this image and have worked on the sharpness and the lightness of it. Here is the latest for your review.



Regards,
Munish Kaushik

[Arthur Morris]

Thanks Munish, The highlights are still too light. I selected them (Select/Color Range) and ran a 30% Linear Burn and tweaked that with a Layer Mask....

I noted that there was lots of artifcating in the background.... especially on the left side. You can see it in the JPEG.