Elegant Tern

I had been photography Sea Otters in Monterey Bay and got chatting to a birder as you do, He mentioned that there were a colony of Elegant Terns not far up the coast so i thought i would go and check it out, The sun was diectly overhead which is not the best but decided that as i had a couple of hours kicking my heels that i would get some shots and see if anything could be saved-good practice if nothing else,This is one of my favorites from the session, Please comment on the processing, I have done little to it as files from the 1D3 are very good but a friend has commented that he thought some images he has seen look slightly over processed which is a worry, Full Frame

1D3 500+1.4X 1/2500@F6.3 ISO400 Full Frame

Hi Dave,

Nice shot, but my intial thoughts were it looked overcooked, it does to me look contrasty and over saturated and it lacks critical sharpness. On the plus side, good detail in the whites and good composition.

Regards

Rob

I know it is more than likely a RAW process, but, as you don't actually say it is really hard to comment on the processing... the image does have a look of too much highlight compensation ( taking into account the harshness), my initial impression was that the contrast was too high)

Not a great deal of help I know, not very conversant with 1D3 files.

Phil

Ok well the image has had levels adjusted, A touch of curves, small amount of sat-under 10 and highlights under 10 and thats it plus sharpening- i calibrated the screen last week so will do it again

Looks good to me. I can still see good feather detail in the whites and the sea looks lovely and blue. It is contrasty, but then again it was midday. Nice and punchy.

My first impressions were the same as others - just a bit too much contrast and/or a touch overblown. Also seems not totally sharp around the head. Otherwise nice action capture.

How are you doing with the AF on the Mk111? - so much negative stuff about it on various fora.

Don't recall an image of these turns being posted on this site Dave, and fine capture it is!!

First impression was the contrasty feel {not surprising, given the conditions}.

I personally often find it difficult to judge fine detail on screen images of open winged birds bodies, as the body often tends to be relatively small within the frame, and screen resolution comes into play {along with jpeg compression}.

Alan

Great action. Looks a bit over cooked, for want of a better term, it looks 'pushed'.

Brian

Hi Dave it looks like there's no fine detail as though it's been run through neat image three or four times which gives you the defined edges under the wing but no real detail if you know what i mean, on the my monitor there is a definite halo all-round the bird, the sea looks noisy for iso400 the only real sharp point of focus appears to be on the back wing tip, of course the lack of apparent sharpness is probably due to heat haze.

So it does have that over processed appearance which spoil's what could be a really fine image.

Phillip.

Thanks for your time to comment
Jim-The MKIII does have issues-birds in flight against a plain background are no problem with the camera grabbing then and focusing fast and sure-however trying to get a bird in flight against a busy background-well you are pretty much wasting your time