Critique Style Requested: In-depth
The photographer has shared comprehensive information about their intent and creative vision for this image. Please examine the details and offer feedback on how they can most effectively realize their vision.
Self Critique
I really love photographing these owls and I was stoked to get this little one with some colors of fall still visible. I’m also happy with the sharpness of the eye considering the time of day, which I’ll share more about below.
Creative direction
I am working hard on NOT cropping too close on my birds and allow them to be smaller in the frame to tell a larger story of the bird in their environment. I think that I did that okay here without including a lot of other distractions.
Specific Feedback
Here’s my struggle. This image was created approximately 20 minutes after sunset in low light and pretty extreme settings.
ISO 12800
600 mm
f/4.0
1/13th of sec
Any tips/tricks for shooting in such conditions would be appreciated.
I did run through topaz photo AI and that did a good job of getting rid of the noise and sharpening the image, but the owl is still a bit soft. Is this just a function of the time of day, available light, and settings?
Technical Details
Shot on Canon r5
ISO 12800
600 mm
f/4.0
1/13th of sec
post: Topax AI, Lightroom, Photoshop to remove a branch.
Description
I love photographing owls and these little screech owls leave their cavity at dusk, so photographing them out of their cavity and active can be quite challenging. I was thrilled to capture this guy shortly after leaving the cavity. An instant later, he was gone to the night.
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4 Likes
Hi Tony
I think it all works. The fall colors and the branch the Owl is perched on, make from a nicely framed photograph. I think you could a sharper and cleaned looking Owl from DXO Pure Raw or DXO PhotoLab 8 using (DeepPRIME XD/XD2s). free 30day trial.
Peter
This photo has an ISO of 12k. DeepPRIME XD/XD2s
Tony, this is a really beautiful fall image. I can never find these guys in the open! Nice pose and the fall colours are excellent. The branches frame the bird nicely.
The large version shows quite a bit of noise and a few processing aberrations.
Along with Peter, I find that DxO Pure Raw does a superior job of noise resolution, especially at very high ISO’s.
Sweet image!
HI Tony. I don’t normally look at the largest image because it’s too big for normal computer distance viewing or display. That said, I did do it on this image and I do see a lot of noise in the owl that actually appears almost like fine detail in the smaller images. By keeping the owl small in the frame, at a respectable viewing distance, this works fine and the image looks excellent (and that’s the real goal, not satisfying us pixel peepers). I will put in another vote for DxO’s PureRaw, but I do know photographers that get amazing results with Topaz, so I suspect it’s in how it gets used.
If you weren’t concerned about making the foliage sharp anywhere and there wasn’t any significant wind, you could try even longer exposures since owls often hold still nicely. The early bird photographers managed excellent image quality with exposure of 1-2 seconds fairly often.
Hi Tony, love the composition here - the bird small in the frame in this environment works really well. I also use DXO PureRaw for handing high ISO images but as Dennis states others have gotten excellent results using Topaz.
Tony, this is about the best composition, color and image of an owl with Fall colors I could imagine. As @Dennis_Plank did, I looked at the largest image and see a bit of noise in the owl itself, but not much in the rest of the image. I wonder if you selected the owl and ran it through Topaz Denoise again if it would help. Just a thought. I love this image in the smaller version.
A gorgeous catch! I like the small in the frame idea. I don’t think Topaz as such failed here. Which algorithm did you use? Did you check the Model Preferences? Topaz works best (and usually beautifully) when you have not pushed tonalities too far in raw, and especially haven’t brought up darks too much. I think I remember that the R5 has small photosites and would therefore be more prone to noise than some bodies. DXO seems to work well but I think you may have leeway to try a slightly different approach with Topaz and get better results.
