Finch Wars

[AlanBeesley]

Don't see this every day... A Goldfinch & Greenfinch going head to head....

[GBO25]

Superb.

[AlanBeesley]

Thanks Graham.

More luck than judgement. They were squabbling near a feeder so I thought I may as well try and catch the action with a rapid burst.... I got lucky The Goldfinch won surprisingly...

[Wavelength]

Just awesome!!!

[Dave Humphries]

Great action shot and accurate focus Alan,

Being super critical of PP, I might venture the sharpening has a wider Radius and greater Amount than I would have applied to this size image.

Due to necessary DoF and movement blurs, the sharpening has only 'bitten hard' in a few areas, so that's where I am looking, most notably adjacent the white/black edges in tail feathers bottom left corner, where there are white halos inside the white panels. Must be viewed at 1:1 to see properly.

After downsizing to whatever size I am displaying online, I sharpen the finished image file with UnSharp Mask at somewhere around 80-120% Amount, Radius of 0.3px and Threshold as low as I can get away with, usually single digits, sometimes zero.

Welcome to the forums and I hope that's helpful, Dave

[Shadowman]

Nice capture.

[AlanBeesley]

Thanks for this Dave, very useful feedback - I'll give it a try. I read somewhere in how to PP bird photographs to sharpen incrementally (with unsharp mask) 3 times while downsizing in 500 pixel steps from 95% to 65% and finally 35% at a radius of 1 pixel.... adding a touch (25%) of Gaussian blur here and there if the sharpening appeared too severe. If required a 15% amount could be applied to the processed image. I've never been 100% happy with the results but just got used to doing it that way so I'll give your method a shot...

After downsizing to whatever size I am displaying online, I sharpen the finished image file with UnSharp Mask at somewhere around 80-120% Amount, Radius of 0.3px and Threshold as low as I can get away with, usually single digits, sometimes zero.

[Dave A]

Wow, great image. Best bird image I've seen in quite awhile.

Dave

[bje07]

Wow, great image. Best bird image I've seen in quite awhile.

Dave

+ 1
Jean

[bnnrcn]

Great !

[Dave Humphries]

I read somewhere in how to PP bird photographs to sharpen incrementally (with unsharp mask) 3 times while downsizing in 500 pixel steps from 95% to 65% and finally 35% at a radius of 1 pixel.... adding a touch (25%) of Gaussian blur here and there if the sharpening appeared too severe. If required a 15% amount could be applied to the processed image.

That sounds like a heck of a lot of phaffing about, unless you have recorded an action to do it.

If I have a particularly soft image, I will sometimes sharpen in multiple USM passes*, but not while simultaneously downsizing.

* start at say (approx.) 3px and 20%, then 1.5px at 40%, finally 0.4px at 70%, but exact figures depend upon the image. The aim is to successively steepen the slope of an edge, while not causing overshoots (aka halos)

For web display, I just down size once, the whole way, using Bicubic smoother, to an image size that suits my PC screen via browser (typically 950 px height), then sharpen for that, using figures above.

I always start my downsizing from an image that is 2 or 3 times 950px in height after cropping, if not the full resolution

Cheers, Dave

[John 2]

Excellent image. Not just the fact of the capture but you have caught the bird in a pose that tells the story beautifully.

[madcrow]

What a beautiful image and brilliantly executed. A joy to look at.

[RandyRFJP]

Beautiful image!

[NorthernFocus]

Awesome action and well captured. Dave already pointed out the sharpening artifacts. The method you described sound way overly complex. Perhaps for prints it is worth such a convoluted method. But sharpening for web simply isn't that hard (assuming the original capture is reasonably sharp).

[AlanBeesley]

Thanks for all the positive feedback - much appreciated and I'm glad you all like the shot.

Special thanks to Dave and Dan for the technical tips regarding sharpening - just the sort of feedback I was hoping for when I joined the forum.

FWIW, I've only been taking photographs for just over two years so all the tips and help I can get are incredibly helpful.

Thanks again

Alan

[NorthernFocus]

...FWIW, I've only been taking photographs for just over two years so all the tips and help I can get are incredibly helpful...

You're doing quite well for a relative novice, Alan. This shot and your nuthatch in another post are nicely done. It would help us help you if you could share what equipment you shoot and what software you use for processing. Also adding your location and what name you prefer to go by to your profile is nice.

[AlanBeesley]

Hi Dan,

I'm currently using Canon EOS 7D or occasionally 40D with a Sigma 150-500 for the wildlife shots.
As for processing, I use Lightroom and Photoshop cc. I have a Topaz denoise 6 plugin installed in Photoshop.

Those things are on my profile I think so I'll have a look at getting them to show.