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Stonechat

Discussion

8 replies
Posted by Dave Cordery on March 14, 2008 at 2:26 AM
Stonechat
This is a picture I took this week at Cley. I would like some comments as to whether I have over sharpened and also to the composition. I like this picture but I suppose I would.

D300
300 f2.8
f7.1
1/4000
ISO 1000
Aperture priority

Regards

Dave
Posted by Mike Smith on March 14, 2008 at 3:00 AM
Sorry Dave it does look soft and over sharpened - there is an obvious halo around the subject.

Not sure why the image is like this, you can pick out bill bristles, but at same time there is no definition detail, which for a 300 f2.8 is odd - is it a massive crop and simply low definition from the resultant small size?
Posted by Dave Cordery on March 14, 2008 at 3:14 AM
Here is the picture with no sharpening just a crop of 100% or there abouts. Is it better needs sharpening
Posted by PhilH on March 14, 2008 at 3:56 AM
Hi

Something is definately amiss here.. it would help if you could outline your PP work....

All the best

Phil
Posted by Andy Astbury on March 14, 2008 at 4:09 AM
Dave - definitely could do with knowing a. your software, b.workflow, and c.is the original a RAW file or jpeg?

Posted by Matt Cole on March 14, 2008 at 5:43 AM
it looks to me like it's been softened by noise reduction, it seems to have the tell-tale smoothing effect e.g. on the bird's back. Also, you say the 2nd image is 'a crop of 100% of thereabouts' do you mean this is a 100% crop from a much larger image (and hence the 1st post had been interpolated)?

Matt
Posted by Dave Cordery on March 14, 2008 at 6:23 AM
Original a raw file noise reduction in CS3 then sharpening with USM. I think I over did ths sharpening at this point. Unfortunately with a 300mm lens and walk about it can be difficult getting close enough to the victim to take a picture that does not require cropping. I also had the settings on quite high ISO as I was trying out the new D300 with its high iSO noise reduction.
Thanks for all the comments if anyone has any recommendations that I can try on original. I am more then happy to try. It is the only way to improve and I certainly want to do that.

Regards

Dave
Posted by Andy Astbury on March 14, 2008 at 7:30 AM
You' got something gone awry somewhere Dave - a D300 will render great images at 1000iso.

I hope you are using Nikon Transfer to import your RAWs onto your machine.

If you have ViewNX on your machine (you should have seeing as it's free) then render this file as an 8bitTiff (full size and no compression) and email it to me if your email server will allow.

If your server won't handle it use this http://www.yousendit.com/
Posted by Dave Cordery on March 14, 2008 at 9:25 AM
No I am not using Nikon Transfer but I still have all the work on the memory cards. I will load this software tonight copy the files accross again and see if there is any difference. Oh the joy of knowledge :toast:

Best regards

Dave