This photo was taken back in March. I was so into photographing burrowing owls in those days that I would drive 4 hours to Salton Sea every single weekend for a month. And the smell of salton sea didn't bother me much...
I wish I used f/7.1 or smaller to get more wings in focus.
For sharpening, I used unsharp mask 0.2 radius 150% for two rounds, and then duplicate a layer with overlay 0.2 highpass filter.
Does that look over-sharpened to you? Or the opposite? If so, please suggest what parameters and workflow you use. Thanks.
Edited in LR3 and CS5.
Canon 1D Mark IV, 300mm 2.8, f6.3, 1/4000s, ISO 500, handheld.
Hi Tin Man,,
The eye and head are tack sharp and look great. I wish his wings were all the way up or down though. With regards to sharpening I do not have the same recipe for each picture. I use unsharp mask as you do sometimes (no overlay though) but I also like smart sharpen at 30% a a radius of anywhere from 0.2 to 0.5. I do it once or twice.
I will often send my JPEG back to DPP and use the sharpening there for a final touch up.
Sharpening really is a recipe that varies from photog to photog!!
Gail
Thanks Randy and Gail! I agree the big plant is a bit distracting. I like the eye of the owl, with that sad look, which is different from my other shots.
Gail, when you do sharpen, do you create a layer and sharpen the whole image, and brush away the background?
I did a Noise reduction on the background, with a few pixels buffer away from the bird. I found that if I NR the whole image and brush away the bird, the boundary between the bird and the background got averaged out and the color got smeared.
I use the magnetic lasso tool at a zoomed in level and "rope" the bird super accurately, then inverse the selection then apply noise reduction. It seems to work OK without any smearing.
Gail
Tin Man, this is a terrific image in my book. The way the eye and face stand out against the nice bg, perfect bird placement and great sharpness make this a winner for me.
Imo, your DOF works just great as is. Great work!
Hey Tin Man,
Some good advice to try out above but I really feel you did a fantastic job and the BG is very complimentary. I can see this as a pano too....removing some of those lower elements with a crop. Nice luxury to have and a fine image indeed!!!