This is an opportunity that just showed up as I was working a chickadee at it's nest hole. This guy is nesting in the area for sure, but a small army of photog's has been unable to track it down.
He flew into the area about 150ft from where I was and began feeding on the ground & fallen logs. I didn't really think he would let me approach & since my tripod was set too low for shooting & moving. (you know how it is, the bird stays put during the whole process of adjusting the rig, only to fly off the second you put your eye to the camera) So, I took a chance & took the (rental) 200-400f4 VR lens off the tripod & headed his way.
The light was HEAVY overcast & dark, even more so in the brush where he was feeding. I bumped the D70's ISO from 400 to 640. With the lens at 400mm (600mm equivalent) and wide open, I set the shutter speed set at 1/500th & turned on normal VR.
To my suprize he actually let me get pretty darn close, but being new to AF, VR, & hand holding a lens this big, I didn't want to lower the shutter speed any slower than I had it so the resulting images are at least a stop under exposed. That under exposure and the
d70's handling of it at ISO 640 has produced an extremely noisy image.
It appears just sharp enough, to me anyway, to consider keeping. At least the birds eye is sharp. The extreme noise is not helping the overall image sharpness, and trying to bring up the exposure is creating a definate and unappealing color cast.
I'm posting a small, unprocessed version of the original along with a quicky attempt I made to render a presentable image from it in PS-CS3. It's not really, Really, awful considering my post processing skills, (i've never tried to fix & keep anything this messed up before!!) but I was wondering if anyone has some advice on what can be done in CS3 (if anything) to save this image.
That lens has been returned, so for now, this is pretty much a once in a blue moon shot for me. Since I don't have the resources to go & buy additional 3rd party software or plug-ins to help with this. If anyone can outline/suggest a method of fixing this I can employ using what I've got,.. I would truely appreciate it!!
I tried some of the obvious noise reduction settings In the camera raw & CS menu without much success. I was just hoping someone had a specific method or "trick" of some sort,(something akin to Marc Adamus's sharpening method only for for Noise reduction) that might be helpful)
As you can plainly see my attempt is still gawd awful noisy, and a bit off in color to my eye. I'm sure that's not all thats wrong with it, I hope someone can help. I doubt I'll get another chance at shooting him anytime soon!!
This is strictly my amatuer opinion, Craig, but I don't really see any serious noise in the photo. I just see a whole lot of bokeh due to all the "stuff" that's out of focus both behind and in front of the bird. I don't think noise reduction is helping you because there really isn't any noise to speak of. If you look closely at the black beak for instance, its clean and sharp. If you had noise it should show up in the black areas more than anywhere else. Every part of the bird that doesn't have OOF vegetation in front of it appears very clean to me, especially for an ISO setting of 640! The green tint on the white feathers of the body is from the same OOF effect of vegetation in front. That's judging from the seriously downsized screen version though so maybe I'm missing what you're seeing at full size. It looks like you had a clear path to the head and that's what counts in this kind of shot. I would just brighten it up a little more than you did and then back off on the green levels a bit because green seems to get amplified more than other colors when you boost the brightness a lot. Then, if you still don't like it, you can certainly give it to me. I'd be happy to claim it
Here's my go at the photo. I added about 2 stops exposure in Camera Raw, some mild sharpening and contrast, increased saturation a bit. Ran it thropugh Imagenomic's Noiseware at two different settings (one for the entire photo and a stronger setting for every thing but the subject), adjusted tonal values and color correction with curves, and then darkened the foreground and background...
Here's my rework Craig. I bumped the low end of the luminance curve just a bit, added lots of brightness and not quite as much contrast, backed off the green levels in both the midrange and highlights and finally did a little bit of selective masking on the brightness layers to tone down some of the blurred leaves and branches and bright spots in the background. It would turn out much nicer if I were working on the full size original.
Looks good, Gary. Sorry we missed connections last year. Here is my take on the photo:
http://www.philsplace.topcities.com/pileated.jpg
1. upped exposure +2.5
2. Processed in ACR, 50% sharpening, 0.5 pixel radius. Added some black, clarity 25%, vibrancy 15%, luminance noise reduction about 30%
3. Layer masking and Apply Image via multiply 20% for the greenery, and 30% soft light for the woodpecker (unobscured area).
4. Level adjustment (15%) of the flattened image.
5. Noise Ninja of the luminance layer, LAB mode.
6. Smart sharpened 30%, 1 pixel radius.
7. Faded SS luminosity 100%
Craig, this is based on your jpeg. I assume more success would be possible on a full res RAW. All done in rther quickly in CS3 at 8bit. First layer - Image, adjust, shadow/highlight. Not something I use alot, but it worked pretty well to fix the exposure. Subsequent layers - NR was simply through PS/CS3 filter, not Ninja. Also used the blur brush in spots. Bird was hand masked to avoid NR. Bird was sharpened, BG was NR'd with two passes. (Channel masking was not a great option with this image.) You are going to lose lots of detail in the BG, but with more selective masking you can choose where to save some detail. One thing I did not examine was noise in individual channels. If I have any better luck reducing noise in one ore more channels, I'll let you know. Re-posted at quality 11.
2nd try - this one had NR applied to all channels in CMYK mode, and was then switched back to RBG. (You could try various channels in various modes.) Notice more detail in the BG, and the bird does not look oversharpened. Point being, I think with some time spent trying different things, and more attention to various masks than I have done, this nice image can be salvaged.
I'll surely take a shot at some of these actions on the original RAW. Based on what you've shown me here, it does look like this image might just be salvagable. Since it looks entirely possible to get a decent finished image using just PS, I'll be curious to see what might be possible with some of the 3rd party software available. (It'll be a while before I can consider purchasing any of it, but when I do,.. OH boy!!)
Discussion
9 repliesHe flew into the area about 150ft from where I was and began feeding on the ground & fallen logs. I didn't really think he would let me approach & since my tripod was set too low for shooting & moving. (you know how it is, the bird stays put during the whole process of adjusting the rig, only to fly off the second you put your eye to the camera) So, I took a chance & took the (rental) 200-400f4 VR lens off the tripod & headed his way.
The light was HEAVY overcast & dark, even more so in the brush where he was feeding. I bumped the D70's ISO from 400 to 640. With the lens at 400mm (600mm equivalent) and wide open, I set the shutter speed set at 1/500th & turned on normal VR.
To my suprize he actually let me get pretty darn close, but being new to AF, VR, & hand holding a lens this big, I didn't want to lower the shutter speed any slower than I had it so the resulting images are at least a stop under exposed. That under exposure and the
d70's handling of it at ISO 640 has produced an extremely noisy image.
It appears just sharp enough, to me anyway, to consider keeping. At least the birds eye is sharp. The extreme noise is not helping the overall image sharpness, and trying to bring up the exposure is creating a definate and unappealing color cast.
I'm posting a small, unprocessed version of the original along with a quicky attempt I made to render a presentable image from it in PS-CS3. It's not really, Really, awful considering my post processing skills, (i've never tried to fix & keep anything this messed up before!!) but I was wondering if anyone has some advice on what can be done in CS3 (if anything) to save this image.
That lens has been returned, so for now, this is pretty much a once in a blue moon shot for me. Since I don't have the resources to go & buy additional 3rd party software or plug-ins to help with this. If anyone can outline/suggest a method of fixing this I can employ using what I've got,.. I would truely appreciate it!!
Here's the original,..
I tried some of the obvious noise reduction settings In the camera raw & CS menu without much success. I was just hoping someone had a specific method or "trick" of some sort,(something akin to Marc Adamus's sharpening method only for for Noise reduction) that might be helpful)
As you can plainly see my attempt is still gawd awful noisy, and a bit off in color to my eye. I'm sure that's not all thats wrong with it, I hope someone can help. I doubt I'll get another chance at shooting him anytime soon!!
Thanks
http://JimClark.smugmug.com/photos/294734541_kikMr-M.jpg
Tint +4
Exposure +2.8
Clarity 24
Vibrance +14
Saturation +12
for the Noise
Luminance 34
Color 26
http://www.philsplace.topcities.com/pileated.jpg
1. upped exposure +2.5
2. Processed in ACR, 50% sharpening, 0.5 pixel radius. Added some black, clarity 25%, vibrancy 15%, luminance noise reduction about 30%
3. Layer masking and Apply Image via multiply 20% for the greenery, and 30% soft light for the woodpecker (unobscured area).
4. Level adjustment (15%) of the flattened image.
5. Noise Ninja of the luminance layer, LAB mode.
6. Smart sharpened 30%, 1 pixel radius.
7. Faded SS luminosity 100%
I'll surely take a shot at some of these actions on the original RAW. Based on what you've shown me here, it does look like this image might just be salvagable. Since it looks entirely possible to get a decent finished image using just PS, I'll be curious to see what might be possible with some of the 3rd party software available. (It'll be a while before I can consider purchasing any of it, but when I do,.. OH boy!!)