Well I hear what you say, the time was 6am, and the sun was behind the hide and to the right, so not alot getting on the subject,I have used a little Shadow/highlight, and contrast/brightness, and hopefully improved the image??? I know its a diiferent image, but out of the 30 or so I kept most had the same lighting........
Posted by Rob Howard on August 13, 2006 at 4:02 PM
Hi Stewart,
It is an improvement light wise on your previous image, but this image has needed a fair bit of tweaking and that processing is obvious in the image I'm afraid. The pose and perch you hace got is great, just a shame the Kingfisher does not land on it when it's in the light. Would it be possible to set up some sort of flash system??
Keep at it and you will get a winner
Regards
Rob
Posted by David Kjaer on August 13, 2006 at 4:45 PM
Hi Stewart
Really nice image - IMO the main thing that lets it down is the processing. I made a few basic adjustments in 'levels' which made a great improvement in both the colours and contrast!
It's a real shame the processing has caused such significant banding as the pose and sharpness all look spot on.
It's hard to offer any advice as to whether re-processing the image would be worth trying without knowing just what the original is like,I'm presuming the original was quite severly under-exposed for the shadow/highlight tool to cause such severe banding in the background.
I guess you're probably already aware that working on the image in 16bit is preferable to editing in 8bit mode.
I guess the way I'd try and process it would be to try and correct the exposure as much as possible in the Raw conversion stage.This will no doubt create unwanted noise which could then be lessened by using a noise reduction program.
Next stage would be to play around with shadow/highlight tool or curves,whichever your most comfortable with.
The kingfisher has actually come out quite well,it's just the colour banding in the background that's the main issue and the large soft edged halo around the perch,which is often a result of too high a tonal width setting when using Shadow/highlight.
If you havn't done so already, try making a seperate selection of the bird/perch and of the water and just working on each individual component untill your happy with the result.
You'll likely find that the banding is caused through trying to lighten the water too much,view your image at 50% or 100% and try increasing the Shadow/highlight sliders very gradually,I find a radius of 80,and an amount of 60% makes a fairly good starting point,and then just gradually try different tonal width settings,maybe starting with an amount of 6 or so.
As soon as any banding begins to appear it's because your trying to extract too much detail from information which isn't there.Back off a liitle bit and you may have to accept your left with a quite dark backdrop.This IMO is far preferable to any artifacts/banding.
If the worst comes to the worst and you can't successfully rescue the image,and you have the oppurtunity to re-shoot,if the direction of the sun is always going to be against you,then choose a cloudy day,that way the light direction isn't an issue and the bird and water should be evenly lit.
Posted by Sean Bolton on August 14, 2006 at 2:20 PM
Hi Stewart
A lovely shot, a good composition and excellent detail in the Kingfisher. Framing is a bit tight, and I might be tempted to clone out the branch in the top left of the frame.
From David's post it sounds like you could improve the colours in this shot with a different approach to your post processing.
Discussion
5 repliesIt is an improvement light wise on your previous image, but this image has needed a fair bit of tweaking and that processing is obvious in the image I'm afraid. The pose and perch you hace got is great, just a shame the Kingfisher does not land on it when it's in the light. Would it be possible to set up some sort of flash system??
Keep at it and you will get a winner
Regards
Rob
Really nice image - IMO the main thing that lets it down is the processing. I made a few basic adjustments in 'levels' which made a great improvement in both the colours and contrast!
David
It's hard to offer any advice as to whether re-processing the image would be worth trying without knowing just what the original is like,I'm presuming the original was quite severly under-exposed for the shadow/highlight tool to cause such severe banding in the background.
I guess you're probably already aware that working on the image in 16bit is preferable to editing in 8bit mode.
I guess the way I'd try and process it would be to try and correct the exposure as much as possible in the Raw conversion stage.This will no doubt create unwanted noise which could then be lessened by using a noise reduction program.
Next stage would be to play around with shadow/highlight tool or curves,whichever your most comfortable with.
The kingfisher has actually come out quite well,it's just the colour banding in the background that's the main issue and the large soft edged halo around the perch,which is often a result of too high a tonal width setting when using Shadow/highlight.
If you havn't done so already, try making a seperate selection of the bird/perch and of the water and just working on each individual component untill your happy with the result.
You'll likely find that the banding is caused through trying to lighten the water too much,view your image at 50% or 100% and try increasing the Shadow/highlight sliders very gradually,I find a radius of 80,and an amount of 60% makes a fairly good starting point,and then just gradually try different tonal width settings,maybe starting with an amount of 6 or so.
As soon as any banding begins to appear it's because your trying to extract too much detail from information which isn't there.Back off a liitle bit and you may have to accept your left with a quite dark backdrop.This IMO is far preferable to any artifacts/banding.
If the worst comes to the worst and you can't successfully rescue the image,and you have the oppurtunity to re-shoot,if the direction of the sun is always going to be against you,then choose a cloudy day,that way the light direction isn't an issue and the bird and water should be evenly lit.
A lovely shot, a good composition and excellent detail in the Kingfisher. Framing is a bit tight, and I might be tempted to clone out the branch in the top left of the frame.
From David's post it sounds like you could improve the colours in this shot with a different approach to your post processing.
cheers
Sean