I really liked the potential energy in the pose this finch gave me between drinks from one of my drips.
What technical feedback would you like if any?
Any. Not much done to this besides a crop and a bit of feather enhancement.
What artistic feedback would you like if any?
Anything.
Pertinent technical details or techniques:
(If backgrounds have been removed, etc. please be honest with your techniques to help others learn)
7DII, Sigma 150-600 C @ 531 mm, tripod with ball head and Sidekick, f/8, 1/400, iso 2000, manual exposure. Processed in LR & PS CC. Noise reduction with NeatImage. Cropped from a horizontal original, full height. Taken yesterday at 1:13 pm under cloudy skies.
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I like this aggressive looking pose. Color and detail are good. Nice contrasty background against which the bird stands out nicely.
Not a critique, but a question, trying to learn: I would have thought the rear of the bird might be in better focus at f8, though I think it works well and gives more emphasis on the pose. Also, as we have the same equipment, I know at ISO 2000 I would have had a very noisy background. I’m not familiar with Neatimage. Did you just remove noise on the background, or does Neatimage help retain detail in the Finch while removing noise?
Hi Allen. I’m pretty close to the birds in the blind so the depth of field is low. This bird is probably 5 inches front to back and focused on the eye, I have quite a bit of wasted depth in front of the bird in this pose. However, I prefer that to a soft beak.
I’ve been using NeatImage quite a long time now, and I use it on the whole image. Usually, I use their “auto” mode that tries to find a uniform area in the image at least 128x128 pixels and decides from that what the noise reduction should be. You can also download presets based on camera and iso or the show you how to generate a set of noise reduction settings for your particular camera. I have only very rarely found that applying it to the entire image compromizes the detail in the bird. Lately, if I have a really busy background that this software is having trouble with, I’ll try the Topaz AI noise reduction.
Hope all that helped.
1 Like
Pleasing eye contact and excellent detail and color. Well composed. I haven’t seen any Purple Finches this year.
Nice pose and the drip pays off. For me the DOF is just fine, as it emphasizes the eye and beak. Cheers, Hans
