NikonGear'23
Images => Nature, Flora, Fauna & Landscapes => Topic started by: ArthurDent on December 30, 2016, 18:56:46
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This thread features a number of the birds I've photographed in and around St. Augustine, Florida.Please feel free to comment and criticize the images. I am interested in your comments and am looking for criticism to improve my photography. All of the images I'll be posting were taken using my Nikon D7000 (which I've subsequently replaced with a D500.) The images of birds in flight were taken with the Nikon 70-200 f/2.8 VR lens. The images of birds on the nest were taken with either the 70-200 or a Sigma 800mm f/5.6 lens. I'm going to put 1 image in each subsequent post to make it easier for you to comment on and criticize them. Thanks in advance for any responses.
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Roseate Spoonbill
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A bird whose name escapes me
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Nice photos, but with too much sharp for my taste.
The second one is a Glossy Ibis (Plegadis falcinelius)
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Great Egret
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Nice photos, but with too much sharp for my taste.
The second one is a Glossy Ibis (Plegadis falcinelius)
Thank you for your comment. What sharpness setting do you usually use?
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Thank you for your comment. What sharpness setting do you usually use?
None on camera. Post processing depends but never let white lines to appear...
3rd photo shows a nice action take.
3 comments; it seems too heavily cropped and shows noise, try not to cut the wing feathers, and better to shoot at different hours (sunrise gives you a more cooler and perspective light, sunset a more warm and candid one)
Thanks for sharing and asking feedback. That's for brave hearts.... ;)
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Cattle Egret in Mating Plummage
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None on camera. Post processing depends but never let white lines to appear...
3rd photo shows a nice action take.
3 comments; it seems too heavily cropped and shows noise, try not to cut the wing feathers, and better to shoot at different hours (sunrise gives you a more cooler and perspective light, sunset a more warm and candid one)
Thanks for sharing and asking feedback. That's for brave hearts.... ;)
Unfortunately, it's not a crop, I cut off the wing tip in taking the photo. Too bad, because otherwise it would be one of the best shots I've ever made.
Could you please explain what you mean by the white lines?
it would be better to shoot during the golden hours, but I only had 1 day to shoot, so needed to use all available time.
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Unfortunately, it's not a crop, I cut off the wing tip in taking the photo. Too bad, because otherwise it would be one of the best shots I've ever made.
Could you please explain what you mean by the white lines?
it would be better to shoot during the golden hours, but I only had 1 day to shoot, so needed to use all available time.
That's ok Arthur, don't take me wrong... we shoot when we can, that's it...
Shooting birds, like everything else, takes time and practice. Did I say practice? The most striking thing that I learn with Morris (the other Arthur :)) was how little I was rejecting photos. When I asked him how did he manage to do such great photos we showed me two huge piles of rejected slides... yep, it was still the slide era, and were two really huge piles of them.
So continue practicing and don't worry, just enjoy as you get them.
By white lines, I mean jpeg artifacts due to sharpening. Look at the legs of your 1st bird. Don't you see white lines contouring them? Those should never appear.
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Cattle Egret in Mating Plummage
Very nice one. Well done
Again, one comment: on those type of photos, having the eyes sharp is the most important thing, what you nailed well, but maybe a f2.8 would have helped to diminish the disturbing background.
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The halo's can be caused by over sharpening or down-sizing an image.
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That's ok Arthur, don't take me wrong... we shoot when we can, that's it...
Shooting birds, like everything else, takes time and practice. Did I say practice? The most striking thing that I learn with Morris (the other Arthur :)) was how little I was rejecting photos. When I asked him how did he manage to do such great photos we showed me two huge piles of rejected slides... yep, it was still the slide era, and were two really huge piles of them.
So continue practicing and don't worry, just enjoy as you get them.
By white lines, I mean jpeg artifacts due to sharpening. Look at the legs of your 1st bird. Don't you see white lines contouring them? Those should never appear.
Yes I see them. Thank you very much for pointing that out.
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Yes I see them. Thank you very much for pointing that out.
oh you will see halo's on many images... Often photographers dont even notice their own halo's :)
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The halo's can be caused by over sharpening or down-sizing an image.
Thank you for taking the time to point that out. Much appreciated.
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Arthur, let's look again to the nest photo...
Here's your exif
1/6400s f/18.0 ISO4000
Looking at those settings I can tell that the image will be much better if:
ISO - don't go higher than 800 (to avoid noise)
f2.8 to f4 to better isolate the subject and having a better blurred background
1/1000s to 1/2000s don't need more with the used lens
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Arthur, let's look again to the nest photo...
Here's your exif
1/6400s f/18.0 ISO4000
Looking at those settings I can tell that the image will be much better if:
ISO - don't go higher than 800 (to avoid noise)
f2.8 to f4 to better isolate the subject and having a better blurred background
1/1000s to 1/2000s don't need more with the used lens
Thank you, I agree with you entirely.
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Preening Time
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Great Egret- Full Cruise Mode
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Preening Time
Great one
Look
1/1000s f/8.0 ISO400
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Great one
Look
1/1000s f/8.0 ISO400
I thought you might like that one better, although it still isn't quite up to your specifications.
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Preening Time is a very nice image, nice subtle details in the feather and very nice balance in the overall picture.
The set up Pedro quoted are familiar settings to me, was your body in auto ISO in the earlier images as 4000 is not a common choice in that type of light.
I would give my shutter depress finger for a photo trip Florida at present, you are in a wonderful place.
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Preening Time is a very nice image, nice subtle details in the feather and very nice balance in the overall picture.
The set up Pedro quoted are familiar settings to me, was your body in auto ISO in the earlier images as 4000 is not a common choice in that type of light.
I would give my shutter depress finger for a photo trip Florida at present, you are in a wonderful place.
Yes, the camera was set to auto-iso in the earlier image. Why it chose an f stop of f/18 and iso of 4000 when I had it set to shutter priority with a shutter speed of 1/6400 selected is a mystery to me. But apparently it did. It looks like some kind of software glitch to me. But more than that, I'm suspicious as to what the true iso was. At iso 4000 on the d7000 the image should have been quite noisy, and the image is pretty clear with no post-processing. All that said, I should have been paying more attention and should have noticed the glitch.
The best time to come to Florida to photograph birds is in the spring when they are concentrated in the nesting grounds. April is usually pretty good, especially the second half. The other advantage of April is that it isn't usually too hot or too rainy.
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Yes, the camera was set to auto-iso in the earlier image. Why it chose an f stop of f/18 and iso of 4000 when I had it set to shutter priority with a shutter speed of 1/6400 selected is a mystery to me. But apparently it did. It looks like some kind of software glitch to me. But more than that, I'm suspicious as to what the true iso was. At iso 4000 on the d7000 the image should have been quite noisy, and the image is pretty clear with no post-processing. All that said, I should have been paying more attention and should have noticed the glitch.
The best time to come to Florida to photograph birds is in the spring when they are concentrated in the nesting grounds. April is usually pretty good, especially the second half. The other advantage of April is that it isn't usually too hot or too rainy.
In sufficiently lighted scenes, ie lots of light, high ISO is usually coming with surprisingly low noise. Noise will show in deep shadows though and the general nice behaviour will usually change in low light scenes.
It also may limit your head room to pull darker areas in post production.
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In sufficiently lighted scenes, ie lots of light, high ISO is usually coming with surprisingly low noise. Noise will show in deep shadows though and the general nice behaviour will usually change in low light scenes.
It also may limit your head room to pull darker areas in post production.
Thank you for your response. As I look at the image, I think you are right. If you look to the right of the bird's head in the dark area, there is a great deal of noise.
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Fine details need gentle small radius sharpening. Course detail can use more sharpening. Areas with no detail need no sharpening and can develop artifacts and excentuate noise. Too much unsharpmask mask can easily develop white outlines.
My approach is to use average sharpening. I shoot only NEF(s) or RAW files so I can turn off sharpening when I develop my NEF(s). Currently I developing in Nikon CaptureNX-D and finishing up in Photoshop. I do my sharpening.next to last and specific to the use for the image. For example I'll under sharpen photos for upload to forums where the forum software sharpens and over sharpens photos. Last of all I convert from Adobe RGB to sRGB and save a JPG for upload or printing.
I use in camera sharpening because with NEF files that sharpening is not baked in as it would be when shooting JPG(s). The LCD on my Nikon D800 is on the mushy side and with unsharpened previews it's extremely mushy so I can't check for focus.
I hope something here helps,
Dave Hartman
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Hi Arthur
I,m wishing I could say "see you there in April", I've got a Grandson now, and under the guise of "Oh wouldn't it be lovely" that enough of the scheming.
Back to editing support, can you supply the software you use for your image processing, I am sure you will get a few pointers of how to best utilise it.
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Hi Arthur
I,m wishing I could say "see you there in April", I've got a Grandson now, and under the guise of "Oh wouldn't it be lovely" that enough of the scheming.
Back to editing support, can you supply the software you use for your image processing, I am sure you will get a few pointers of how to best utilise it.
Hi john- Awhile ago I purchased a new laptop and was not able to migrate my software to the new machine. So I'm down to NX-i and NX-D. I'm thinking about getting Lightroom. Any thoughts?
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Hi Arthur
I am familiar with CS6, Lr6, Capture One Pro 9 and DxO Pro 11.
Each of these programmes can interact with each other, but I usually open up the bulk of my work in CO Pro9, now available in Pro 10.
This software will allow a edit to forwarded direct to CS6.
The CO Pro 9 is the slowest at opening a RAW file, I would say by the time it needs about 15 minutes for 100 75Mb files until it has completed
its opening tasks.
Photo's can be viewed as the process is on going, or a cuppa and browse on NG works as well.
This software renders RAW files extremely well, many images will just need a little contrast, brightness and saturation. Any further work will
show in the RAW, but a resized Jpeg will not be greatly improved.
It also has a focus mask tool, that is very good, and if you scroll your images with this turned on, you will quickly see the flashing green mask
on the infocus zones, very nice to be able to select images to work with further when time is tight. A Highlight tool also offers the same service
with a flashing red mask, again nice to see the non recoverable highlights in the image, you can quickly tell which ones can be cropped or
recomposed out of the final image.
This software has a catalogue system and a selection of tools to help you remember how you rated an image when you open files at later
dates.
Lynda have a excellent set of video tutorials, showing you how to make the most of it and navigate the tools.
It is a very good and is a rival to Lr6.
DxO pro 11, is again a great software, limited by having no catalogue storage. It will allow you to create a information file attached to your
image if you open up the EXIF Tool.
The Prime Noise Tool is extremely good, as is Smart Light Tool and Clearview Tool. These three tools at work with Sharpening is enough for
any image resized and stored as a Jpeg. A RAW file can be further enhanced by using the other tool options.
To send a file to CS6, it needs to sent through Lr6 first.
I use Lr6 for the RADIAL FILTER, to assist in isolating a area for a exposure change, this can be done in CS6 using the marching ants.
I also use the spot removal as a clone tool, again this can be done in CS6. I have a knack with these two tools in Lr6 as it was my sole
editing tool for a good year or so. I also use Lr6 as a stepping stone for DxO to CS6.
CS6 is like a religion, it means many different things to many different people, for a novice it is not easy to navigate can be frustrating,
this statement should not be used as a deterrent, it just means more time is required to fel confident in the tasks it can carry out , which are
many. After months of visiting it and learning a bit, I chose to have a private tutorial over a period of weeks, using you tube as source for the
creative tasks. My tutor would download the tutorials onto my laptop, we would spend time getting my confidence up in using the tools, so I
did not leave blind to the challenge. I then returned at a later date with a workflow to present and any thing that was available to improve
my efforts was offered by my tutor. That was a great way for me to learn.
I have been offered a similar support for my initiation into off camera flash work.
I hope you take advantage of the free trial periods on some of the suggested softwares and can find a programme that satisfies you.
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Lightroom (currently at version 6.x OR subscription) probably offers the best balance...in one place... of 1)number of useful image adjustment tools plus 2)DAM features(sorting, organizing, cataloging). Also, there is by far the largest amount of 'aftermarket support' for Lightroom: classes, tutorials, instructional material, and shared user troubleshooting. Lightroom is a good choice as a first, all-in-one raw converter plus DAM. If you make prints, Lightroom has a really good printing interface, outside of a separate professional printing program.
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Some really great images here.
The trick to getting better from this great starting point is attention to detail (I see it in my own work too). But one never has enough time with birds, so the initial camera setup has to be good, as there will normally be little time to change.
If trying for birds in flight, I recommend Manual mode with Auto-ISO. Set up the shutter speed for the size of birds you are shooting (maybe 1/1000th for the large birds shown here, 1/2000th for pigeon-sized birds, 1/3200th or 1/4000th for the small and fast birds and I have been told that for humming birds 1/8000th is not quite fast enough).
I normally feel that the aperture should be fairly close to wide open, while others prefer a larger DOF. But I would not go smaller than f8 for birds.
Using the D7000 and now the D750, I have/had one of my "user modes" set up to Manual mode, 1/2000th, f5.6 or nowadays f5 (I use f4 primes) and Auto-ISO, with ceiling set to maximum native ISO. I also use AF-C with back button enabled, focus delay set to 0 and 9 points active (with the D7000 I used a single point as it was so much slower). I am not sure if this can be easily achieved with the D500.
This will keep your ISO to the lowest possible level while keeping the other factors suitable. Keeping to a maximum ISO of as little as 800 is, in my opinion, not practical. I say this because I find a lot of the best sightings (and action/interaction) happens very early in the morning, or on rainy days.
My cheat: I have found that on bird feathers, noise can actually look like feather detail. If I am forced to photograph at high ISO's and have resulting noise problems, I will "paint" the entire background (except for the bird and possibly it's perch) and reduce noise, sharpness, clarity and sometimes even contrast and saturation in those areas. For reference, all my editing is done in Lightroom. Since I have no experience with other programs, this is not necessarily a program recommendation, I am only trying to say that this editing process works in LR, but I have no idea whether it is possible in any others.
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Thank you for your thoughts, very helpful.