Gambel’s Quail (Callipepla gambelii)
Place: Phoenix, AZ
Date: March 22, 2020
Equipment: Nikon 1 V3, Nikkor VR 70-300 f/4.5-5.6 @ 300mm
Exposure: ISO 800, Aperture priority matrix metered, 1/400th @ f/5.6
Raw, Photoshop 2020 on Mac, cropped to 93% of full frame
A male quail photographed just off our patio, through the glass of the patio door. During these days of social isolation there aren’t a lot of subjects available.
A nice detailed look at the quail.
Every time I see a photo of a quail, I’m jealous that I’ve never had a good opportunity with one!
I’m surprised you have this much detail after shooting through your patio door. Feather detail on the bird is nice. Critique-wise, the background is a bit bright, and the image is pretty noisy. I’d also suggest bringing your darks down a touch. They look a little shallow.
Thanks for commenting.
I’m not a fan of over processing, so I try to keep a light hand with any modifications and tend to stick close to what I saw when I shot. I’m also working with a so-called 1 inch sensor (8.8x13.2mm), so all my recent work will show more noise than from FX or even DX cameras. I find that an acceptable tradeoff for a much smaller and lighter rig that lets me shoot hand held at the equivalent of 810mm on an FX body.
As I implied in my note, there’s not much choice in what I can shoot during the lockdown, so I take the opportunities available to me. That includes shooting anything in this tree no matter what the light is at the time I shoot. Personally I have no issue with the tone of the background - it looks completely natural to what it was when I took the shot.
I’m not sure what you mean by the darks being a little shallow; could you expand on that?
In any case, here’s a quick rework on the jpeg - bright background toned down; some noise reduction applied to the background.
An excellent shot of this Quail, Richard! I like the way it’s framed by the tree and the colors and detail are great! I’m quite surprised at the clarity considering you were shooting through window glass! I think the noise reduction in the second shot made a positive difference when viewing the large image. Personally, I think the black levels are perfect and very natural looking. The dimmed background in the re-work does put more emphasis on the bird but the original version has a more natural feel to it. A great opportunity and an excellent capture, especially considering you didn’t leave your home or even open the door!
I think the noise reduction helped quite a bit. I also think tamping down the BG helped put more focus on the bird in the re-post. So, both improvements in my book. As far as the darks being “shallow,” I meant that they appear a little washed out, i.e, they are all nearly the same tone, when there should be more variance between them. I did a quick re-work as an example of what I mean.
Like what you’ve done here Rich. I’m amazed that you can get so much detail through glass. Do you have optical glass windows? Well, clean windows for sure. All three images work for me but I think I would cut back a tad bit on the yellow orange saturation in the left lower corner. The original post looks more realistic to me. Of course this could be my monitor which although calibrated, I wasn’t there to witness reality.
