1º Contributo (Milvus milvus) - Como posso melhorar?

Olá a todos!

Neste Natal fui presenteado com uma Canon 1000d e, para estrear a máquina com aves, resolvi acompanhar o RIAS (Centro de Recuperação de Animais Selvagens da Ria Formosa - http://rias-aldeia.blogspot.com/) numa libertação de 8 Gyps fulvus e 1 Milvus milvus em Alcaria Ruiva (Mértola).

De todas as fotos que tirei houve uma que, apesar da pouca luz presente, me encheu de orgulho e vos deixo já de seguida:



Canon 1000d + Canon EF 300mm

Apesar de estar orgulhoso da fotografia sei que poderá haver a hipótese de a melhorar assim, espero que me possam ajudar!

Fico à espera dos vossos conselhos!

Abraços
Tiago Ventura

Olá,

Está muito boa, mesmo. Podes tentar colocar a ave mais para a direita e para baixo no enquadramento de modo a que dê a sensação de que existe espaço para onde voar. No photoshop, ou outro software podes aumentar um bocadinho a "exposição" para ficar um pouco mais clara. Com céus nebulados convém aumentar sempre um pouco.

Concordo com o L_Almeida. Embora eu goste mais de as deixar na parte de cima da imagem...depende do que se pretende transmitir. Para além da técnica, a componente "psicologica" para não dizer subjectiva de uma imagem é o que destingue uma boa foto de um snapshot...

Ora viva Olhanenese!

Aqui vai a aminha versão da tua foto, tomei a liberdade de te "gamar" a foto e editar no meu pc.





Abraços
Thijs

Já agora, cá vai a "minha versão".

A imagem sacada, não permite muitas mexidas, mas cá vai:




Alberto

Obrigado a todos pelos conselhos e dicas!

Abraço
Tiago

Olá, aqui fica a minha versão: tentei clarear a ave mantendo também reter os valores lumínicos do fundo...





Abraços

My version Tiago:




Nice shot, but spoiled by the "crop".


Colin

Hi Colin,

I had no idea that the original photo had this amount of detail - I am amazed!

Simon

Hello Simon,

The advent of digital cameras and the facility to "shoot, shoot, shoot" at no cost has produced a generation of photographers with no comprehension of the science and art of photography (no offense intended to Tiago, who took a wonderful shot but did not process it correctly).

I have been taking photographs since I was eight years old (54 years ago!) and went through the rigours of dark-room processing in black and white as well as colour-negative photography. Whilst focussing is, of course, of paramount importance, there are few modern day DSLR pohotographers who fully understand the concept of "exposure", the key to getting the image correct in-camera before you apply any post-processing.

Colin

Hi Colin!

No problem with what you said (not offended ). You're right!
Now is much easier to take a photo with the new digital cameras but i don't know how to process her. That's why i put the photo here to "listen" some advise!

I just want to know how did you, and the others, do that!

Cheers!

Colin,

I agree with what you say completely! I also did lots of photography as a child and teenager and developed B+W in my Uncle's darkroom. If I had the cash I would get state of the art equipment now and when shooting I would always work on getting the image correct-in-camera. This I believe will produce a natural "as you see it" image, so important when dealing with birdlife.

What I really meant with my last post was that I am amazed at what can be done with an image such as the one posted. To my eyes the post production you did is showing visual information almost invisible to my eye in the original AND made the colour tones look just right. I am still amazed - if I had seen these two images I would have imagined that they were two shots taken with different exposures.

Simon

I am amazed at what can be done with an image

Simon, that is why raw image is called digital negative, it is similar to a negative film: we always keep the original and there is plenty of exposure latitude...

In my opinion - ok, I am not defending my version (or I am, lol, but now I see that my version is a bit to dark) - but I think the one of Colin is a bit to light: look the darker areas of the wings, that should be dark brown (almost black) and they are not. We can even seen the tiny little light gray spots, caused by the the forced "development" (the original was a bit dark, and recovery it to much will always cause that...). I think something between this two images would be the ideal, but ok, that is a bit subjective. What do you think?

Sorry for my english...hope I made miself clear

Hi barrento (I know I have met you but I cannot remember your name - sorry!),

Your English is more than adequate and you made yourself crystal clear - thanks!
(If I may just correct one thing - something too light or too dark has a double o - that is my message to you! too = demasiado to = à. Also gray is American English - English English is grey - try selecting English UK rather than English US)

I suppose what most surprises me is that dark colours, looking almost black, can be lightened to produce natural colour.

I agree that the most ideal image would be one between yours and Colin's.

Also I really do agree with Colin's comment about "new age photographers" and I also feel uncomfortable about people who think they are nature photographers before they understand the basic natural history of their subject!

As I forgot before I must commend Tiago on his first post - let there be many more!

Abraços

Simon

Hi Simon,

My name is Eduardo, and my family name is Barrento you can call me what you want...
Thank you about the english lesson

I also agree with you and Collin about knowing the subject: I think a nature photographer should understand about photography and about nature...

Ventura escreveu:Hi Colin!

No problem with what you said (not offended ). You're right!
Now is much easier to take a photo with the new digital cameras but i don't know how to process her. That's why i put the photo here to "listen" some advise!

I just want to know how did you, and the others, do that!

Cheers!

Hello Tiago (and all),

Firstly, my apologies for this thread evolving in English but my Portuguese is not good enough for technical discussions. But, you guys all write such good English and it was actually mysef who suggested to Gonçalo and Maria that we initiated a "sala" for Foto Critique.

I don't agree with Eduardo that my image is too light; I think that this comes within the natural variation of this species and I checked carefully on the plumage colour tones before saving the re-worked image. I do however agree with him that shooting in RAW format is essential, and if I had the original RAW file of this image I could make a much better job of it.

I am using Photoshop Elements 6 on a Mac as I find it sufficient for my needs. I have access to PS CS5 but can honestly say that I have never been able to improve on an image processed in PSE 6 and the latter is much quicker.

These are the actions performed on Tiago's image:

1. Instead of using "Levels" I enhanced the image with automatic "Shadows & Highlights" and moved the "Lighten Shadows" slider all the way to the right.

2. Under "Adjust Colour" I increased the "Saturation" by a value of 10.

3. Under "Adjust Lighting" I increased both "Brightness" and "Contrast" by about 5 or 6.

4. Reduced noise using "Neat Image" (which I have as a plug-in in Photoshop) by taking an auto-profile off the grey sky (71%).

5. Applied a moderate pass of "Adjust Sharpness" (when working with a larger image, usually a TIFF converted from the original RAW, I would apply "Unsharp Mask" and then a lighter pass of "Adjust Sharpness" after the image size was reduced to 800 pxls).

6. Saved the image as a maximum quality (value 12) JPEG - I alwaya use "Save As" rather than "Save for Web" as the latter compresses the file and undoes some of the enhancements you have just spent ten minutes making!!

It is all a lot easier (and quicker) than it sounds once you understand how Photoshop works.


Um abraço,


Colin


P.S. Forgot to mention that I used the "Selection Tool" to do some additional sharpening and lightening around the bird's head, bill and eye.

Hi Colin,

Could you please explain this part:

Colin Key escreveu:

P.S. Forgot to mention that I used the "Selection Tool" to do some additional sharpening and lightening around the bird's head, bill and eye.

Thanks,
Gonçalo

Hi Collin (and all): I have to desagree with you What you did comparing "carefully on the plumage colour tones" is a good starting point, but, as you said, there are diferences in plumage, and, most important, the same specimen looks different in different light conditions.

Photographically speaking, a white object in a shadowed area should not be represented white, but light gray.The same is valid for other colors... If you push the white shadowed areas, to appear white, you will spoil the other values, and at the end of the scale, the black will became grey. So you end up with a flat greyish image...

My point is if you see carefully, your image is a bit flat. Look in the area of the eyes of the bird, for exemple. It should have had some shadowed areas, behind and in front of the eyes should have dark areas, resulting from the natural anatomic "depressions" (I dont know the exact word in english). Or the lower side of the neck areas, the shadow should be more intense.

I am working with a calibrated monitor, with CS4. I tend to make little changes in my images, because to much editing causes posterization of the image. What I did was:
0. if the image was a jpeg (unfortunatly it was a bitmap) I had opened it in camera raw (yes it is possible) and made the bigger editting here, it is better..
1. select the bird with quick selection tool (never forget "feather")
2. In the Layers pannel open levels to creat a new layer to work the levels
3. sliding the three different channels (red, green, blue) to neutralize the colors casts and at the same time, to change the contrast (here I failed, i should give it a bit more contrast, but the light was not to strong, I think it was a dull dark day...was it Tiago?)
4. invert the selection and repeat for the background
5. a bit of unsharp mask

that is it.

Abraço
Eduardo

Gonçalo Elias escreveu:Hi Colin,

Could you please explain this part:

Colin Key escreveu:

P.S. Forgot to mention that I used the "Selection Tool" to do some additional sharpening and lightening around the bird's head, bill and eye.

Thanks,
Gonçalo

Hello Gonçalo,

In PSE you will find in the left-hand vertical "Toolbar" the "Magic Wand" and the "Selection Brush" tools (hover the cursor over the icons and their names are revealed). With the Magic Wand you can click on an area of the image and it will automatically select the adjacent area with similar colour, brightness and contrast and surround it with a white dashed line (you might have to click several times to define the area you want). If you then go to enhancements you can apply changes (colour, sharpness, contrast, etc) to this specific area. With the selection Brush tool you can "paint" over an area rather more precisely (the size of the "brush" is adjustable) and then apply changes to the selected area.

In Photoshop CS there are other more delicate (and complex) ways of achieving this, but I have never found it worth the extra trouble.

Hope this is clear.

Um abraço,

Colin

barrento escreveu:Hi Collin (and all): I have to desagree with you What you did comparing "carefully on the plumage colour tones" is a good starting point, but, as you said, there are diferences in plumage, and, most important, the same specimen looks different in different light conditions.

Photographically speaking, a white object in a shadowed area should not be represented white, but light gray.The same is valid for other colors... If you push the white shadowed areas, to appear white, you will spoil the other values, and at the end of the scale, the black will became grey. So you end up with a flat greyish image...

My point is if you see carefully, your image is a bit flat. Look in the area of the eyes of the bird, for exemple. It should have had some shadowed areas, behind and in front of the eyes should have dark areas, resulting from the natural anatomic "depressions" (I dont know the exact word in english). Or the lower side of the neck areas, the shadow should be more intense.

Abraço
Eduardo

Olá Eduardo,

I have to agree with you in several respects, but would still prefer my version of Tiago's image over yours since it has more detail and "vibrance" whereas yours is still very much underexposed. I am always reluctant to work on an "already cooked" JPEG since this introduces optical artifacts that are not present in the original. If Tiago shot this image in RAW without any in-camera adjustments, it would be useful to have the original file to work on.

There does come a point where 'personal taste' intervenes in apprecciation of a photograph!!

Best wishes,


Colin

Olá Colin,

Yes, my version is a bit under-exposed, I said that before, but I think your is a bit over-exposed... that is why I said something in between would be great

As you said, it is a personal taste at same point...

I agree that working with raw would be better...

Abraço

barrento escreveu:Olá Colin,

Yes, my version is a bit under-exposed, I said that before, but I think your is a bit over-exposed... that is why I said something in between would be great

As you said, it is a personal taste at same point...

I agree that working with raw would be better...

Abraço

Olá Eduardo,

I think it is good that we agree, but with small differences of opinion - debate/discussion is a very good thing.

The main point is that I hope that Tiago has possibly learned something from his posting and will think more about how to improve his images.


Kind regards to all,


Colin

Olá Colin,

Yes, we agree on that too I am always learning, and that kind of discussion is good for that... and I hope it is for the other members too!

Cheers,

Eduardo

Your discussion is quite interesting. But allow me to express another point of view. It seems to me that first thing is to do is to correct the framing (in accordance with Mr. Colin first comment). Unfortunately with do not give much space to let the bird breathe. There, and after it should be a mix between the color correction and a low pass filter. If the color correction increases detail and luminosity it also increases the image noise and the contrast. In the case of Mr Colin picture it seems to be overexposed and become a little bit artificial. A little bit od blur (very little) adds sometimes the impression of speed, which also maks the camera noise. So here it's my suggestion to Tiago Ventura nice moment (it lacks a little bit more attention on the head...):



I hope my remarks were useful to you.