Lilac-Breassted Roller 2

[J van Noordwyk]

Hi everybody

I posted a roller a week or 2 ago and i hope to inprove on that with this one

I removed a branch from the top left
+- a 40% corp
sharpend
and run 2or3 NR's on the bg. I am still not to happy with the bg

. Camera Canon 1D mk4
. Lens Canon 500 f4
. SS 1/2500
. AV F6.3
. ISO 800
. Support seed - bag (shot from my car)

Thanks
Johan.

[Frank Schauf]

A great dynamic situation, congratulations.

[arash_hazeghi]

nice take off and good details. a tough shot to get. it is too close to the border of the frame on the left and the OOF perch distracts a bit. TFS

[Gerald Kelberg]

Hi Johan,

Great pose and colours on the Roller; and very sharp - almost too sharp for my personal taste.

I can see your grief with the background - despite your NR attempts there is still noise there and starting some posterisation. Are you isolating the bird / masking the background when you are sharpening the bird? Not doing that could bring the noise up.

Thanks for sharing,

Gerald

[gail bisson]

Hi Johan,
The LBR flight shot is the shot that has eluded me in 3 trips to Africa so I am envious of this one!
I would go back to the RAW re: the BG. I wonder if Gerald is correct re: are you sharpening the BG after NR? If you aren't, then maybe do NR of 10 then a tiny little bit of Gaussian Blur? The BG looks to be lovely so I can't figure out the noise at this low ISO.
I wish the OOF branch wasn't there intersecting with the tail. I would move the bird more to the right as well. Perhaps including more of the perch in this case would work,
Gail

[Dumay de Boulle]

IQ looks better than the previous posts and the exp looks close to spot on. Great wing position and lovely colors and BG. And it is a take off shot so incl of the perch is no problem. Yes separation form the tail and perch would be nice but thats not always possible...Nicely done!

[J van Noordwyk]

Thanks for the GOOD advice and for commenting . I'm in it to learn and that is wat i do !!

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Johan, I too still need a decent take off shot of a LBR. Well timed here, and I would leave the perch too. Hope you dont mind, but Ive shown what can be done on the BG to get help with your noise. Of course you can do it all from RAW too. Ive run a blur on the BG, and also decided to apply a multiple blending layer on the whole image.

[Gerald Kelberg]

This looks a lot smoother, Stuart. What do you mean by a "multiple blending layer" and how has it contributed to the image? What was the procedure?

Thanks,

Gerald

[J van Noordwyk]

Tanks for the time and effort Stu it looks 100% better and like Gerald I'd love to know more about multple blending
Sorry for the late reply, so bussy this weekend
thanks
Johan.