The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
This is the one, and only rough-legged hawk that I’ve ever seen and I was fortunate to grab some shots of it. This was my favorite pose that it struck for me.
Specific Feedback
I have added a little sky to the right edge to give it more landing room. I think this works although I’m not usually a fan of squared cropping. What say you?
Technical Details
D500, 200-500 lens, hand held, 1/3200th, f 8.0, 1050mm, ISO 450, cropped to 2175 x 2279.
Critique Template
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Hi Dave
Nice catch, the coloring and eye contact are nice, the feather detail has some modeling in it. Nice catch in the landing.
What processing did you use on the photograph.
Peter
Nice, Dave. This composition works for me and the landing pose with the outstretched legs is awesome. This one has the same “painterly” look to it as the Merlin you posted recently. I tend to like the results, though I know it’s sacrificing fine plumage detail. I am curious what processing you’re using that results in this look.
Gosh, I shot this a while back and I’m guessing here that I blew it up pretty good, then opened it in photoshop and probably hit it in Photo AI. Oh, and I also treated it in lightroom’s sharpening, and noise reduction. I probably did most all of this with my other recent post of a kestrel having breakfast.
Dave - what a great pose you caught here! Those feathery legs and the intent look are just excellent!
As others have noted, the large version shows a big loss of detail that must be from processing. This is one image that wold be best as sharp as possible.
Hi Dave, wonderful landing pose and good look at the eye. Love those outstretched talons. I also notice the loss of feather detail that was in the Merlin shot.
This is a fantastic catch, worthy of going back to the raw file and processing with less of a heavy hand. The modern NR features are so good. Sharpening – not so good, and shouldn’t be needed in most captures.
@Dave_Douglass
Or you can try the free trials yourself.
Forv Pure Raw, be sure to start with the untouched, un-edited original RAW files. It will provide exceptional noise reduction plus any needed sharpening, from an AI-based assessment of your file, all in one simple click. .
My response to this last post by Sandy is: When the editing program becomes the photographer, what are you? I’m getting to the point where I don’t trust much of what I see on line as “real,” or even accurate. When do we stop relying on AI and go back to the basics of good photography skills, where the photographer determines everything in the shot? Now, do I use PS, ACR, TK? I do, but never to deceive, only to clean up digital artifacts. I realize every aspect of digital photography is based on 1/0 algorithms and to glean what we can from a series we have to use some sort of non analog process, but for me, it’s gotten ridiculous to the point of absurdity. Hey, I’m an old toot; it’s to be expected
Hi Dave, great landing pose! Always love those feathered legs of this species. The feather detail already mentioned. I have never used the AI feature in PS, so I am not sure what it would even do? You might need to explain that one for me.
The term AI is easily bandied about by the marketers. The NR algorithms we have now have supposedly been “trained” by some sort of AI-something, but they are still just removing noise – and still far from perfectly. If anyone objects to that as going too far, don’t use them. But if you could get the same results with a newer camera that had lower noise, would you feel that was off limits and stick with the old one?
We have a lot of other retouching tools in addition to NR, and some of the newest ones are amazing and freaky. If you use them, reveal them. But really, it all started with cloning. How long ago was that??
A major point is that things like denoise and the vastly-overrated “sharpening” are still controlled to a large extent by the user – or misused – and misuse shows in the images. Some of the newer ones are harder to misuse. but they are not one-click-here’s-a-perfect-image things. They let you make a good image better but they can’t salvage a bad image.
And BTW, that’s not an endorsement of DXO. I’ve tried every version of it and found them all lacking. My old school approach is a good exposure, a sound raw development (LR is the choice for workflow and management) and then going to a PS treatment that relies 99% on masked curves. NR fits in the process, mostly still in PS. That does virtually everything for me.
@Chris_Calohan Chris, I appreciate your point of view but I disagree on several of your points. Firstly, imo, a camera will never “see” and "capture " the scene in front of us as accurately as our God-given vision, so the image from the camera needs some help sometimes. An example is some of my images from under the very dark canopy of Costa Rica. I could see the bird perfectly well with my eyes, but the camera needed an ISO of > 12,000 which rendered the noise almost impossible. Running it through DxO Pure Raw - which I think a great many of us use - salvaged it. To me, this is no different than using the manual NR and sharpening of the older programs, like Topaz.
Also, the sensor could not correctly determine the bright reds, so they had to be de-saturated. I have no problem with manually matching the saturation to the image my eyes saw, irrespective of what the camera’s sensor produced. I see no problem with utilizing both the new and continually-improving cameras, as well as the upgraded software.
I respect that you might have just pitched all those images.
As far as Dave’s 2 images on which I suggested using DxO Pure Raw , both the merlin and the hawk were very fine images. Excellent poses, nice perches, perfect head turn, clean BG. The ONLY problem was the processing, for reasons not entirely known. I suggested using the latest AI software to define the feathers and perch, rather than the Topaz Dave used. One program instead of another. I don’t see this as a horrible thing. DAVE is the photographer who got these exceptional images. The processing did not become the photo.
You state that you’re afraid to “trust” any image on the web, fearing they are all manipulated to a huge degree. Just look at any of the major photo award sites then, National or International. You can “trust” any of them; All accept absolutely NO additions or deletions, and they carefully examine all RAW files of submitted images. before any awards are made.
I think this all comes down to personal taste and choices, as long as any major alterations are disclosed.
I think I’ll move this to the “Discussions”, as I’m very interested in learning the perspective of others.
I agree and I disagree as my statement was in regards to AI in the context of adding images to existing images or creating images sans a camera. That’s my distrust. I was gone for 15 days meandering about the Eastern Seaboard and Niagara Falls, so could not answer in a more timely manner. As to denoising, I use a variety of tools, though mostly On1.
