Crested Owl - Maestros, can anyone rescue this?

[Richard Unsworth]

Hi

Old friends

I wondered can anyone make this into a decent publishable shot???
It was so hard to capture; he was hidden away and backlit, and to be honest I think I did a fair job just to get an image
Has a value to me as the first owl I ever found; nice uncommon one too!

so, I challenge you lol
large tiff can be sent on request!

[Ian Cassell]

Richard, I'll leave the PP advice to the experts, but will offer a suggestion for future similar tough spots. You don't mention what body or techs you're using, but a bit of fill-flash (even the pop-up if that is all that's available at the time) might have helped significantly, even in the backlit setting.

Nice looking owl!

Happy holidays!

[Richard Unsworth]

Thanks Ian

I think subject too far for flas m8 need to get a full rig + bb

at least my popup (maybe santa will bring me one)
at 400mm and then cropped some
body is a 7d
Exif
1/30 handheld - tough call lol
ISO 800
F5.6
eV +1 unable to give more; ISO at 1600 kills it with noise, did some they are awful

[Ian Cassell]

Richard,

I use a 7D with a 400/5.6 and have found the pop-up does a lot better than I would ever have imagined (even at some distance). When I remember, I carry a 430EX and a Better Beamer and even then sometimes wish for something more powerful, but the pop-up has been known to get me out of tight spots.

[Richard Unsworth]

Hmmm
thanks for that Ian Ill give it a go on the next owl lol
Unfortunately he is in CR and I am back in England

useful info, appreciated
Merry Xmas

[Ian Cassell]

That gives you an excuse to go back to CR

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Richard,

Greetings. I played with your image a bit. The blown parts are pretty difficult to recover, but the head has some detail midst the shadows...



Shadows can be lifted but to loss of color... Here I walked it up (lifted then worked the color) several times for the head. The colors are a guess at what might be appealing (should be adjusted further from what's posted, looking at it now I think the saturation is overdone). I colored the blown whites with some foliage color and brushed in some texture. Largely successive Lab mode curves, with some color correction with RGB mode curves, a little pop help from Topaz Adjust and more color and tone corrections with Lab mode curves.

The image quality of the original actually isn't so bad (considering this kind of work on a small jpeg usually turns to mush).

No miracles but there is enough on the bird at least to improve the image if it pleases you.

Cheers,

-Michael-

[John Chardine]

Hi Richard- This is a tough one. I agree you did well to get anything. Not sure how much this is already a crop but I'm thinking a head crop might be a nice place to start. The image is very messy with branches and that factor alone makes it difficult to do much. I would be interested to have a go at processing and I'll put up the result if it's reasonable. PM me your email address and I'll send you a Dropbox link so that you can let me have the original file.

[Vimal Stan]

Hi Richard,

I took a shot at processing the image.



PP done in Photoshop CS3.
Shadow/Highlight tool used to recover details and masked off everything but the bird.
Bumped up the mid-tone contrast and saturation a bit.
Added a tiny bit of sharpening.

I don't think I've gotten the colours right, it still looks like it's got a magenta tinge to it.

Hope you like it


-Vimal

[Richard Unsworth]

Thanks for the input appreciate the efforts and results are pretty reasonable.
I will have a go at processing after the new year.