Post your Birds in Flight
- Thread starter Marilynne
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John Thomson
Senior Member
John Thomson
Senior Member
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I really don't like photoshop or elements, Lightroom was so much more intuitive to me. I know I will improve with them but at the end of the month free trial I know which programme I'll be choosing. Anyway this Curlew was edited in Photoshop and I have no idea if I've got the best out of it.
John Thomson
Senior Member
To me, photo editors are for enhancing shots . Trying to fix an out of focus shot in any editor is a lost cause IMHO. Also, LR and PS are two different editors made to do different things.
You can sharpen a bit more when using the High Pass filter and blend but you will have to erase the parts that start fringing.
A quick and dirty attempt at your JPEG. You can do more with the original file. This one got too low quality to really enhance. 82KB ain't much data.
To fix blur or out of focus you need an algorithm that does exactly that but even those only fix to a degree.
Question; what JPEG quality do you save? You best use max quality. Looking at your file-size I assume you use 60-70%?
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I'm not even sure what quality this was saved in from photoshop. I've only just started using it and I find it difficult to figure out the simplist of things. With Lightroom I knew exactly what quality and file size I was exporting, with this I'm essentially clueless.
Do you think this shot is out of focus? My thoughts were that it was a little soft because the lens isn't the sharpest, the light was quite soft and it is cropped quite a bit. I will check the focus of my lens in the next day or two to see if it needs fine tuning. I agree any programme is there to enhance the shot, its just that to me Lightroom is far far more user friendly, so I felt confident I could get the result I wanted.
Not the whole shot, but the eyes look very soft to me. I didn't mean it to come off as an insult or anything. It's not easy to get a BIF shot in 100% in focus, I just thought you were blaming the editor .
I didn't take it as an insult at all. I'm not happy with the vast majority of BIF shots I take. I think I generally have my settings right, so itis probably down to a combination of my technique and using a lens that is not long enough and not that sharp either. I'm hoping I'll find the AF needs fine tuning and that might help me a bit.
PS will require more time to learn since it is rather complex but you can do amazing things with it. I don't think anyone of us here fully knows it. Just experiment with it and slowly you'll find out what it can do. And there's a ton of documentation out there.
Stoshowicz
Senior Member
I have the Nikon 70-300mm too, its a good lens, not GReat, but its a good lens, IMO your focus isnt off target but it looks sharper at the tail than the eye, there is some wing blur clearly at the tips,
but from what I see around , few people really try to totally 'freeze the wings'. Your shutter speed of 1/1000th is a bit slow for that size bird and distance, IMO you'd rather be about 1/2000th but what numbers you use depends on angle and distance and in the end one fudges out what gives them the best results most often.
The adjustments Jsee made ,do look good, at the scale I can see it. The increased contrast from the high pass filter helps delineate the feathers.
I do like the crop, it gives the bird room to move, shows the scene , you could soften the look of the grass in the background if you feel its just a tad more distracting than you want, (most folks seem to like that really blurred background ,, but your taste does matter).. with clarity slider in ACR , or isolate it and blur ( gaussian appx 1-2 pixels) ... again , most things are subjective choice. The one thing that I do judge harsh on the pic and is unalterable that the bird is heading away and looking away. Cool bird, nice light and background,,,,, but that orientation of the subject is vital for maintaining interest in a bird pic.
Thats just My 2 Cents
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I appreciate the critique, always good to have some things to work on. First off I'll start using a faster shutter whenever the light allows and go from there.This bird really caught me by surprise and I was playing catch up, that's probably why the focus is a little far back. Years of shooting don't help with my BIF shots as instead of panning with the bird, my instinct is to swing from behind and overtake it as that is what you do when shooting a moving target like a clay pigeon or a real pigeon for that matter.