Nature Unlimited, 2 December 2022

[ShunCheung]

This is the additional weekly image thread for the Nature Forum. While images posted to this thread should still be nature in theme, it may contain a small amount of human-made objects and therefore less restricted than the Monday in Nature threads. Please see this discussion for more details: Alternative weekly thread in Nature forum

Each participant please post no more than just one image per weekly thread. Many members will appreciate any information you are willing or able to provide regarding location, shooting process, exposure settings, equipment, and information on the subject(s), including scientific and/or common names.

Sandhill crane (Antigone canadensis) landing in Staten Island (Central Valley), California

[Dieter Schaefer]

Wish there wasn't that fence in the background; nice light on this American Robin

[brian_niemi1]

Ruby Throated hummingbird

[ShunCheung]

2 hours ago, Dieter Schaefer said:

Wish there wasn't that fence in the background; nice light on this American Robin

The light/dark areas in that image are very distinct. It would be a good PhotoShop exercise to build a mask to block and then replace the background. The edges of the feather area could be challenging, though. But that won't be nature photography any more in the strict sense. Excellent image otherwise.

[Gerald Cafferty]

Great Tit...........Poor light ISO 6400 

Edited December 2, 2022 by Gerald Cafferty

[Dieter Schaefer]

3 hours ago, ShunCheung said:

It would be a good PhotoShop exercise to build a mask to block and then replace the background.

Not really - selecting the background is quite easy but the mask refinement will be a tad tedious especially around the twigs and berries. Quick and dirty takes a few minutes; doing it proper a lot longer. Not really worth the effort to create another image of a bird on a twig with whatever color background one would choose.

[Bill J Boyd]

Ruddy Duck

[JDMvW]

VA

[Mark Keefer]

Southern California Pacific Ocean

Edited December 5, 2022 by Mark Keefer

[ShunCheung]

1 hour ago, Mark Keefer said:

Southern California Pacific Ocean

Mark, nice picture of the snowy egret, but it looks very underexposed. Not sure you overcompensated for the white bird, either during exposure or in post-processing. I put your picture in PhotoShop and got the following histogram. Pretty much everything is to the left. The EXIF data show that the aperture used was f13.

[mariostuder]

[Mark Keefer]

49 minutes ago, ShunCheung said:

Mark, nice picture of the snowy egret, but it looks very underexposed. Not sure you overcompensated for the white bird, either during exposure or in post-processing. I put your picture in PhotoShop and got the following histogram. Pretty much everything is to the left. The EXIF data show that the aperture used was f13.

In post, as the sunny side of the bird seemed blown out. 

[ShunCheung]

4 hours ago, Mark Keefer said:

In post, as the sunny side of the bird seemed blown out. 

White birds in the sun are always a bit challenging.

[bgelfand]

11 hours ago, Mark Keefer said:

Southern California Pacific Ocean

Very nicely done. At first, looking at the shot in the post, it looked rather dark, almost underexposed. When I clicked on the image and saw the full size image, the egret body and yellow on the egret's legs pop out as well as the green lichen growing on the rocks, separating the subject from the grey ocean background. Well done.

 

How much of the effects are from the image exposure and how much post processing did it require?

[Mark Keefer]

2 hours ago, bgelfand said:

Very nicely done. At first, looking at the shot in the post, it looked rather dark, almost underexposed. When I clicked on the image and saw the full size image, the egret body and yellow on the egret's legs pop out as well as the green lichen growing on the rocks, separating the subject from the grey ocean background. Well done.

 

How much of the effects are from the image exposure and how much post processing did it require?

Well from start to finish here is this shot, sunny day along the ocean shooting the surf, surfers, birds using my Canon 5D MK IV with a Tamron 70-200mm f/2.8 lens CP filter. The setting on the camera were not optimal as I was doing some playing, I generally have my exposure compensation about 2 clicks below center as I don't want to blow highlights in bright sunlight and can usually recover in post as needed.

I had the shutter speed at 1/400 sec as there was some movement shooting surfers, probably I would have that up over 1/600 shooting birds in flight. I think the f/stop was a bit high for this shot, but I had been getting some long beach landscape, shots. Still f/13 isn't too high for this Tamron, diffraction limit is f/16 and you don't really notice it much up to f/22.

ISO was set to Automatic so this should explain the ISO 640.

The egret swooped in and landed on the rocks just about 20 feet from me. Opportunity, move fast get the shot before he gets spooked.

I am shooting RAW and using Adobe Lightroom Classic.

Here is the image untouched except for a crop here. And of course, the image greatly reduced to 1200 pixels wide and the new version of Photo.net is compressing the image so even more detail and image quality is lost but here goes.

First image from RAW with Histogram (Not over exposed)

 

with Histogram (Not over exposed)

Zoom in on feathers, to me it just seemed like the detail in the white was lost.

So I am not happy with the detail in the bright white.

I do this quickly from what I am seeing on my 32-inch monitor.

I dropped the whites and blacks, pushed vibrance and a tad of saturation

I sharpen and remove and chromatic aberration. At f/13 there is ever so slight a hint of red on the right, so this is pretty much a setting I use all the time, it doesn't hurt. I sharpen to 70. That is my limit.

 

Stepping back - This is the histogram of the tight crop on the white feathers before touching anything. This is is not the entire image. They were not blown. I am just not happy with the loss of detail.

So next after rough crop in Lightroom I edit the image in Photoshop.

I do a final crop and add a black boarder, then send back to Lightroom.

Back in Lightroom, I did a few more tweaks deciding to recover some of the whites and shadows, but I did push the black in the image a bit. It's some playing around till I am happy, but I am pretty fast at it.

And that was my process for this image. The shot was not perfect.  And I always looking back at what I could have done better. But this was a casual day at the beach.

Edited December 5, 2022 by Mark Keefer

[Mark Keefer]

I was also editing in a low light room at 1:30 AM and I use a dark background and browser trying to save my eyes. Perhaps the whites looked brighter to me. lol. Anyway that took some forensics to explain.

[bgelfand]

Mark,

 

Thank you very much for the tutorial. I learned a lot. 

 

I noticed in Lens Corrections you did not select Enable Profile Corrections. Is there a reason or just personal preference?

[Dieter Schaefer]

23 hours ago, Mark Keefer said:

So I am not happy with the detail in the bright white.

I'd be quite happy with leaving that image as is. I am wondering whether your monitor is calibrated? Which usually means that the brightness setting is reduced significantly from the factory default. I had people complain about overexposed whites many times when the real reason was that their monitor brightness setting was at the default factory setting which is intended to make the white background in word processing and browser look bright and white but which is way too bright for photo viewing.

23 hours ago, Mark Keefer said:

probably I would have that up over 1/600 shooting birds in flight

That's a slow shutter speed for birds in flight. I usually use 1/2000 and try to avoid getting slower that 1/1600. Only when I am forced by low light levels might I drop this to 1/1000.

 

23 hours ago, Mark Keefer said:

Still f/13 isn't too high for this Tamron, diffraction limit is f/16 and you don't really notice it much up to f/22.

Diffraction for the Canon 5D Mark IV with its 30MP sensor starts somewhere around f/9. Effects can usually be negated by sharpening for much smaller apertures than that though.

[JessieJim]

Nature is unbelievable. 😍