Posted by Peter Aubrey on September 23, 2007 at 7:28 AM
Tricky little buggers is all I'm going to say! Background is a little too pale I think. Unfortuntely they were hovering in just the wrong place. 2 feet higher and it would have been a nice rich green. Quite pleased however since its only my second time trying to photograph these
Nikon D200
Nikkor 70-400 f4-5.6
Manfrotto 055PROB Tripod
Manfrotto 804RC2 Head
1/640
f8
ISO 560
Posted by Andy Astbury on September 23, 2007 at 7:34 AM
Hi Peter - a nice cap
Have you tried a seperate levels adjustment to pull the dragons 'face' in or is it totally blown on the raw file?
Posted by Peter Aubrey on September 23, 2007 at 8:00 AM
Hi Andy, here is the original image. Face is Only thing I have done is convert it to JPG. I have to say I'm still trying to get the hang of Adobe CS2 so any advice you could give would be great. I tend to accept the defaults it suggests when I open it from Adobe Bridge.
Any advice you could offer in how to do my workflow and settigns on the camera (e.g. saturation, sharpness, etc) would be really appreciated.
Posted by Peter Aubrey on September 23, 2007 at 8:00 AM
Forgot to add thanks for replying!!!
Posted by Andy Astbury on September 23, 2007 at 11:49 AM
Peter - the image at the url you gave is a lot better
IMO you would do a lot better using a different workflow because the loss of quality and DR are solely down to that ridiculous abomination 'Bridge' and the peculiarities of CamRaw - both these programmes by default change your image unasked.
A much better idea would be to open your RAW file images in CapOne Pro - or better still seeing as you use Nikon you can download NikonView.
Both these progs will allow you to view your images upto full size or greater, they do not change the image (though CapOne Pro does allow you to make many subtle changes yourself) and both progs do a straight TIFF conversion to export to CS2 or CS3.
Judging the flickr jpeg I'd say that if the RAW file was opened in as an unaltered 16 or 8 bit TIFF in CS2/3 and some advanced Shadow/Highlight options were added this image would be a different 'beast' altogether.
You are getting your compression settings a bit 'screwy' too - the flickr image looks better and is bigger than the one posted above, but its file size is a lot smaller
If you want to email me the RAW file I'll gladly rework it for you and give you the steps I use if you like..............either way,I will say that the original RAW image is, I suspect, a lot better than the above post lets on
Posted by Peter Aubrey on September 23, 2007 at 1:32 PM
Andy you're a star. Thanks a lot for the help, I'll email the RAW file to you. I owe you a beer for this one.
Posted by Andy Astbury on September 24, 2007 at 4:52 AM
Peter - if you have probs sending the RAW file via your mail server try using this http://www.mailbigfile.com/ - use the free account.
Posted by Andy Astbury on September 26, 2007 at 7:33 AM
Discussion
7 repliesNikon D200
Nikkor 70-400 f4-5.6
Manfrotto 055PROB Tripod
Manfrotto 804RC2 Head
1/640
f8
ISO 560
Have you tried a seperate levels adjustment to pull the dragons 'face' in or is it totally blown on the raw file?
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1049/1427105759_293111dc38_o.jpg
Any advice you could offer in how to do my workflow and settigns on the camera (e.g. saturation, sharpness, etc) would be really appreciated.
IMO you would do a lot better using a different workflow because the loss of quality and DR are solely down to that ridiculous abomination 'Bridge' and the peculiarities of CamRaw - both these programmes by default change your image unasked.
A much better idea would be to open your RAW file images in CapOne Pro - or better still seeing as you use Nikon you can download NikonView.
Both these progs will allow you to view your images upto full size or greater, they do not change the image (though CapOne Pro does allow you to make many subtle changes yourself) and both progs do a straight TIFF conversion to export to CS2 or CS3.
Judging the flickr jpeg I'd say that if the RAW file was opened in as an unaltered 16 or 8 bit TIFF in CS2/3 and some advanced Shadow/Highlight options were added this image would be a different 'beast' altogether.
You are getting your compression settings a bit 'screwy' too - the flickr image looks better and is bigger than the one posted above, but its file size is a lot smaller
If you want to email me the RAW file I'll gladly rework it for you and give you the steps I use if you like..............either way,I will say that the original RAW image is, I suspect, a lot better than the above post lets on