A Shadle Spoonbill!

[James Boland]

The first part of the month I had the pleasure to go out with Mr. Shadle on his famous pontoon boat. We worked the usual spots. I was able to experience the immature spoonbills as well as the adults. This image is an immature spoonbill flying in the afternoon. The technicals:
Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 70-200mm f/2.8 with 2X extender @ 400mm (hand held), Manual mode, ISO 400, aperture: f/7 (meant to have it at f/8 ), 1/800th shutter speed.

Image was slightly cropped. Noiseware Pro was used for noise reduction. I used the tonal contrast and polarization filters in NIK Color Efex Pro plugin for PS CS5.

[Kerry Perkins]

Hi James, congrats on spending some time with the Captain. I'm sure it was quality bird photography time! Very nice flight capture, good panning technique and pleasing composition. Getting the eye contact in a flight shot is a special bonus! The issues I see with this image are exposure, sharpness, and saturation. The whites are toast on the bird's back and there is no way to reclaim detail when that happens (check out my sticky post at the top of the page). At ISO 400 and f/7 I would probably be shooting at 1/1250 or even 1/1600 sec. I have shot literally thousands of frames of white birds in direct sun and I'm pretty confident that you could have gone with a higher shutter speed. This would also have helped with the sharpness, which you could probably boost with some USM for a cleaner image. I would also boost the saturation just a tad to bring out those lovely colors and the blue of the sky. This is a super capture and I would love to have it in my collection, just a couple of minor adjustments and try to keep the whites in check when shooting!

[John Chardine]

Good comments by Kerry. I tried simply running another round of sharpening in Photoshop and the image came up nicely. There's a lot of potential here once the whites are toned down (Recovery slider in Adobe Camera Raw, or other methods), and the saturation is boosted some. I would crop tighter to emphasise the subject more.

I must get out with James one day!

[James Boland]

Thanks for the comments. I'll work on the image using your suggestions. I haven't ever used the unshrp mask before. I can see where that is a useful adjustment.

[John Chardine]

Hi Jim- In future I would run NR only on the BG and OOF elements of the image and Unsharp Mask on the subject. All images from digital cameras are slightly soft due to the anti-aliasing filter in front of the sensor, therefore images need to be routinely sharpened. The amount of sharpening depends on how sharp the image is out of the camera and what you are using the image for. A large image with lots of pixels for printing will need more aggressive sharpening than one downsampled for posting to BPN. The typical Unsharp mask setting I use for a sharp image being posted to BPN is Amount = 75-100%, Radius = 0.2-0.5, Threshold = 0-1. Or if you have the later versions of Photoshop, give Smart sharpen a try: Remove- Lens blur, Amount = 100, Radius = 0.3 works well. However, it is best to sharpen by eye rather than by the numbers. The 100% view in the sharpen window allows you to look at the effect. I prefer an "easy" sharpening look, nothing forced, with no halos or obvious anomalies.

[gail bisson]

I agree with everything Kerry said.
Gail

[Tom Redd]

James, great pose, eye contact and wing position, the clouds are a good backdrop. Kerry and John have given good comments/advice.

[James Boland]

Okay... I have a little time to work on the image. I took the suggestions to heart and applied them where I thought best. Still not much I can do about the top of the back, but I did try to town it down some. Just couldn't recover the details. In my opinion, the re-post is much better. Let me know what you think. Thanks.

[Tom Redd]

Jim, you cranked it up in the repost, much better.

[John Chardine]

That is a very sweet repost Jim. The warmth of the light really shows through and the image is sharp! The whites are not toast any more. Amazing what some processing can do, just like we used to do in the darkroom (OK I admit I never worked in colour in the DR).

[James Boland]

Thanks John. Gotta get the Gannets one of these days.