The photographer is looking for thoughtful feedback on the image as a whole, especially around the areas noted below.
Feedback Focus: Artistic + Technical
About This Image
… Or Luck favors the Prepared… or the actual quote is “Chance favors the Prepared Mind” ~ Louis Pasteur.
Man, what luck! I was photographing birds from my back porch. Having fun with my new Tamron 150-500mm lens - and also inspired by many here and especially @Diane_Miller and here backyard bird images. I see mostly the exciting House Finch, but also some others. This guy took off from my supplied perch. I hadn’t secured the focus yet, but fired a few shots and he happened to take flight during one of them!
Feedback Requested
I’m most interested in your reaction and of course my processing. I’m including the RAW, unprocessed original so you can see what I was working from. I did quite a bit of work on it. Did some very targeted dodging, burning, painting on his head; For example, I reduced some streaks in his eye, burned a little so the eye was more prominent. Too much? Also, a couple of bright streaks I painted so they were stark white. Cloned a few small things, but the big edit was using the Content Aware fill tool to remove the blurred area at the bottom. Not sure if that was his feet or what, but the tool did a nice job removing. Let’s see, oh, I extended the canvas a little up top for more room.
Curious to see how you think the greens are rendered. Did a lot of back and forth and tried to make sure the hue was good and did not want it oversaturated. I was less concerned about accuracy in color and saturation with the bird - after all, it’s a blurry abstract…
Thanks for any and all comments, suggestions. Dang, I was lucky!
Technical Details
Camera: NIKON Z 8
Lens: TAMRON 150-500mm F/5-6.7 Di III VC VXD A057Z
Focal length: 396mm
Shutter speed: 1/200s
Aperture: f/6.3
ISO: 3200
I didn’t want to post these in the original post. I guess just to let it stand alone… but I also wanted to share the sequence.
The first image the Male house finch had just landed. Focus hadn’t locked in and then he took off… but I had tripped the shutter a few times and just happened to catch him in flight. The first two and unprocessed RAWs.
Then the first processed frame you can see some blurry lines below the belly. I’m assuming these are his feet before getting tucked in. I thought… hmmmm how good and how far can one go with Content Aware AI fill? Well, you be the judge and let me know what you think!
This is pretty cool. I think your rendering and processing is very good. I have been quite amazed at how Content Aware AI fill works, sometimes its is spot on, and other times it is just laughable. Sometimes I need to undo and redo about 5 or 6 times before it comes up with something reasonable. Not sure if you had to undo and redo to get what you have presented, but what you did post is really good. And yes luck does favor the prepared.
WAY cool, and fun!! Excellent processing and great use of the tools! (Yup, that was the feet.) BG looks fine with lovely greens! Welcome to the backyard birds club! Why go trooping around for miles and bringing home more ticks than good files…
This is very cool Lon. You were very lucky to catch this effect. My question for you is do you typically take bird pictures at 200th of a second? The color of this is excellent. And you got just the right amount of motion blur. I think that’s great.
I get a fair amount of house finches and purple finches in my neighborhood. But this year the numbers are low because I had to wait until the starlings had left the area. The starlings are real bullies. They muscle all the other birds away from the feeder. Most of my feeders are bird proof or starling proof, but I do have a woodpecker feeder that uses suet.
I know what you mean Youssef, but actually this was a one-take edit on that CA fill. What I’ve found is that when you have such a homogeneous bg, like with the greens here, the CA fill has good success. More complicated images, yeah, it’s pretty much hit or miss. Also, I’ve just discovered the AI component of the Remove Tool in ACR (LR) and I’ve been using that. Otherwise, what I did in this case was the PS version of the Content Aware Fill.
As much as I’ve been using and embracing these new “AI” tools, I still try real hard to follow the notion… “could I have removed that branch in the field…” Exception - Abstract and free-form, creative editing. (My 20yr-ago self is rolling…)
I hear ya! The biggest obstacles are usually having to move my patio chair enough to avoid a big hotspot… ha ha!
Fair enough and obvious question. First, I’m NOT normally a bird or wildlife photographer. I decided years ago it required too much dedication, knowledge and equipment to be good at wildlife photography. But now in retirement, I’ve set up my backyard such that I can not only just sit and enjoy the “wildlife”, but now I can photograph them from the comfort of my own patio - you are so right Diane!
To answer your technical question David, For Action/handholding, I have my camera mode setup for Shutter priority and Auto ISO. This was fairly early in the morning before the sun was providing enough light yet. So, metrix metering had me at iso 3200 f/6.3. The new lens isn’t particularly fast at f/5.6-6.7. Given the 400mm I was at, I normally would want 1/500th or faster, but alas it was what it was. Since I was on a tripod and the birds were stationary (when perched) I dropped down to 1/200th during that early light. Anyway… long story… but as you know, there are gives and takes with exposure. But as “luck” would have it… if I had it on 1/500th or 1/800th of a second… I wouldn’t have captured this one! se la vi!
Good question and observation David, Thanks!
Just for the exercise, if you have good light and your iso is reasonable, with your camera, you should be able to have no problem shooting and ISO 3200. But you might try say 2500 of a second just see what happens to your images.
Thanks David. Let’s just say, the whole thing was rather serendipitous… there was no plan to shoot a moving bird with these settings… it just happened that way. Yeah, I get it would be amazing to shoot at 1/2500s!
The colors and processing of this image worked well together. I like the curves in the wing feathers and the fill worked out well too. Birds tend to show up when conditions are less than optimal and you made something out of nothing. The Z8 should have a nice noise profile at high ISO’s which are easily taken care of with photo processing software. Cardinals normally show up at my feeders at dawn and dusk and never get too many chances on them with good light. And now you know why I rarely post cardinal photos (LOL)…Jim
What a fun image! I really like the color contrast between the reds and greens, and your processing is excellent. The wing looks like smoke to me, which is a very nice effect. Very well done!
The abstract-like main pic is fantastic and processing shows off the colours wonderfully. I can see all the work involved, Thx for including the raws.
As a picture the very sharp light green really pulls the eye, so you might consider either extend it round the head of the bird to it pulls the eye where you want, or probably easier tone it down a little.
The image itself definitely deserves a “Wow!” and a “Fab!”
Regards
Huw
Ps Lon, I see you have sorted the green by the head - I was looking at the raw file on the second post.
Your white canvas around the picture really sets it off - and the main image - that you posted first is wonderful!!
Your processing really did a wonderful job accenting the motion, Lon. I love the motion streamlines in this image and how they convey the motion of the sings and that of the body. The greens in the background look fine to me. For reference, smaller birds like this are going to have blurred wings on take-off even at 1/2000, though the body will probably look fairly sharp, depending on the species. I’ve deliberately shot at really low shutter speeds (1/10th) just to see if I could do it, but I don’t think I’ve ever done 1/200. I recall a very educational, if accidental image of a hummingbird feeding taken at 1/60th. The head and bill were tack sharp while everything else was a blur-talk about a stabilization system!
I can say that the Z8 noise does clean up quite nicely using the ACR/LR Denoise feature. It’s pretty frickin’ amazing what it does. I’ve also found that I can even do a bit more using TOPAZ on top of that! I hope to post some images soon. But for the noise in general, I have no idea and no reference or experience with the noise of other branded cameras, so really can’t speak to how good the Nikon Z8 does in comparison.
Thanks Steve! Yeah, I really like the wings and also the back end and tail how it kinda swoops and the blending of colors really make that part stand out! Fun indeed!
Huw, I see what you mean. Hmmm, I might have to do some serious “editing” to “extend” around the head - but I’m always up for a challenge. But also, you mentioning the “RAW” or the first version. I’m not exactly sure what you meant, but certainly the bird while perched is in a different position and it’s not until he takes flight does he run in to the highlighted bg. But I certainly see what you’re referring to. Great observation!
Funny, I also caught a hummer today and yesterday. The first set I wasn unprepared for a hummer and the ss was at 1/320 - kind of a no-man’s-land for a hummer. But to your point, I managed to get head/bill and flower pretty dang sharp, while the wings were full blurs; and the wide open lens didn’t have enough depth to get the back/tail sharp. But anyway, yeah, it’s possible to get head/bill pretty sharp with slower shutter speeds.
Thanks all for the comments! I’ve been having fun in the backyard for sure!
The noise removing modules these photo processing software use for noise removal are outstanding compared to older and much older versions. And that spoils us nature photographers for sure!..Jim
Lon, do you know about Alan Murphy? He started years ago in a modest suburban back yard and now has many videos on backyard (and beyond) bird photography, with a lot of hints for setups.
I love abstract images. They are so fun to take and play with in processing. I’m not brave enough yet to post any here, but maybe soon:o) This image is terrific! Your “Luck” produced a very interesting image. Sometimes abstract or ICM can bee too much . There is a flow and interest to this that makes me want to enjoy it more! Love it!
