Posted by Paula Graham on March 14, 2008 at 1:12 PM
At last I am getting round to the Pantanal shots, here is the first:
I was busy trying to get closer to the owl on the right when it was suddenly joined by the left owl. She was not going to budge over though and he? did only stay for a moment and was gone again.
I have a new flat screen monitor, now calibrated and am still not quite sure about the colours, nor the sharpness. How does it come across to you?
D2x, 200-400mm plus 1/4 converter, 1/1000 at F/8, Iso 250, Tripod
CS3 Raw and processing.
Lovely pair, owl number 1 looks totally chilled out!
Sharpness is fine, but the colour does like slightly muddy - I suppose it depends upon what colour the sky was meant to be (regards time of day for colour temperature) there may be a reddish cast in the image, there again there may not be! judging from the shadow angle I would have expected a slightly cleaner blue sky. Also the saturation may be a touch strong?
but I don't know the subject bird so it is rather hard to critique the colours!
I like it, RE the sharpness, i have a feeling your suffering the front focus, the termite mound is pin sharp as are the legs and faced but the bodies are out of the DOF i think...
Nice image though, i love little owls and the burrowers are very interesting birds.
Posted by John Chapman on March 14, 2008 at 1:37 PM
Hi Paula well caught getting the two Owls do you not think it is a bit dark!
John
Posted by Rene de Heer on March 14, 2008 at 1:56 PM
Paula, must have been a nice trip. It is a nice image but it is too dark and the critical sharpness is not on the birds. What monitor are you using and what calibration method do you apply?
Rene de Heer
Posted by John Robinson on March 14, 2008 at 2:40 PM
Interesting shot.
All been said really.
Cheers
JohnR
Posted by Paul Inglis on March 14, 2008 at 2:52 PM
Hi Paula,
Without raking over the already said issues! Cracking shot! and to get two in the frame! well done! The lens and TC set-up should work in harmony with the D2X!
Posted by eric weight on March 14, 2008 at 3:15 PM
It can't be that far Oof, I can see the legs on the fly sitting on the LH bird's head. I must say that something looks a little strange colour-wise, but my monitor is un-calibrated and I don't know enough to be sure why. Fine shot all the same. Eric
Posted by Paula Graham on March 14, 2008 at 5:20 PM
Thank you so much...had a good look at the colours in the PSD file and sure enough they look a little odd to me too!! New monitor is difficult to get used to.
It is an Acer AL2216W 22" and I calibrated it with the MonacoOptics machine, now out of date. Should I get a better/different spider thingy?
Anyway, I had not done the levels properly...is this rendition better? It looks very bright to me.
This is such a help...thanks again.
No Paula - the Optix DTP94 is one of the best colorimeters out there and is more than capable of sorting out your monitor profile. You might need to 'play around' with the monitor brightness settings on the LCD as the backlighting can often be too bright. Pick a shot of something familiar to you to judge your calibration by .
Quite honestly, I think you're probably ok with this shot - the colours are probably OK - just the light looks to be quite harsh. Most of our US buddies seem to take shots of these little guys early/late in the day in much warmer lighting.
Nice to see you've finally a bit of time to share with us again .
Posted by Peter Barritt on March 15, 2008 at 2:37 AM
second shot looks great on my flat screen Paula. Lovely shot.might zap the fly as it distracts the eye slightly.
Posted by Major Gilbert on March 15, 2008 at 4:54 AM
Great looking pose from the twosome Paula. Your respot seems to have sorted a lot of the problem out.
Major.
Posted by Nigel Blake on March 15, 2008 at 5:11 AM
It is a nice image and great to get two together, the repost looks best exept the whites look to be getting "hot", other than those nits its a good shot, I like it.
If the original file is sharp then I think the sharpness may be down to the resizing method used rather than focus issues, whilst Bicubic sharper is recomended in PS for downsizing, I find that on many images bilinear is best, or on some shots nearest neighbour result in a file that retains better sharpness when smaller.
Posted by Paul Inglis on March 15, 2008 at 7:35 AM
Discussion
13 repliesI was busy trying to get closer to the owl on the right when it was suddenly joined by the left owl. She was not going to budge over though and he? did only stay for a moment and was gone again.
I have a new flat screen monitor, now calibrated and am still not quite sure about the colours, nor the sharpness. How does it come across to you?
D2x, 200-400mm plus 1/4 converter, 1/1000 at F/8, Iso 250, Tripod
CS3 Raw and processing.
Sharpness is fine, but the colour does like slightly muddy - I suppose it depends upon what colour the sky was meant to be (regards time of day for colour temperature) there may be a reddish cast in the image, there again there may not be!
but I don't know the subject bird so it is rather hard to critique the colours!
Nice image though, i love little owls and the burrowers are very interesting birds.
John
Rene de Heer
All been said really.
Cheers
JohnR
Without raking over the already said issues! Cracking shot! and to get two in the frame! well done! The lens and TC set-up should work in harmony with the D2X!
It is an Acer AL2216W 22" and I calibrated it with the MonacoOptics machine, now out of date. Should I get a better/different spider thingy?
Anyway, I had not done the levels properly...is this rendition better? It looks very bright to me.
This is such a help...thanks again.
Quite honestly, I think you're probably ok with this shot - the colours are probably OK - just the light looks to be quite harsh. Most of our US buddies seem to take shots of these little guys early/late in the day in much warmer lighting.
Nice to see you've finally a bit of time to share with us again
Major.
If the original file is sharp then I think the sharpness may be down to the resizing method used rather than focus issues, whilst Bicubic sharper is recomended in PS for downsizing, I find that on many images bilinear is best, or on some shots nearest neighbour result in a file that retains better sharpness when smaller.