Bumblebee with pollen sac

[billtils]

C&C welcome as always

[Wavelength]

Great images; preference, for first

[Urbanflyer]

C&C welcome as always

The first is stronger, partly because there is less bright, out of focus area in the background. For the first one, consider cloning out the bright area on left and top. The bee is nicely sharp! well done!

[DanK]

Good shots. I agree, the first is better. The bright out of focus area in the bottom right of the second one is a distraction.

I don't think I would clone the bright areas, because I don't think it would be easy to make it look natural. Instead, I'd crop the top to bring the eye up to about the 1/3 mark and then burn the bright flowers on the left and the top left corner. Maybe something like this:



One other suggestion: the image is pretty noisy. That could be for a number of reasons. One thing that can cause this is sharpening the entire image, if the image isn't optimal in terms of noise. You won't then notice the noise that much in detailed areas, but it will be quite apparent in the smooth areas. If this were mine, I would sharpen only the bug and the main flower. There are various ways to do this, but if you worked in Lightroom, you could solve much of this by using the masking slider in the sharpening panel.

[billtils]

Thanks Nandakumar, Judith and Dan. I agree about the bottom right corner in the second - I liked the pose of the bee and this was the best of a burst of 6.

Dan - yes, that crop is much better. I'll have a go at selective sharpening later today - it was shot in fairly good light and at ISO 800 to give a fast shutter speed, but that shouldn't have resulted in too much noise. I recently downloaded the latest version of the NIK suite from DxO so a good reason to see how it goes.

[DanK]

Bill,

I have never used a Nikon, but with my cameras, I have found that while noise at 800 is usually not apparent, under some circumstances, it is. Among the factors that make it more apparent are a very smooth area (no detail to hide the noise), exposing to the left, and cropping (which enlarges the splotches). You have the first two, and I'm guessing you also have the third. Then sharpening exacerbates whatever you have.

My own preference is to avoid noise reduction software as much as I can, as it loses detail. So in a case like this, the first three factors are fixed, but I would start by making sure that the areas that appear noisy are not sharpened, and only if that isn't enough would I resort to noise reduction.

Everyone has their own favorite sharpening techniques. One way to avoid sharpening the problematic areas would be to sharpen only locally. However, even with global sharpening, there are things you can do. In the case of bugs, I usually do at least much of my sharpening in LR because I find that the masking slider can be very effective if the areas not to be sharpened are very smooth, as they are in your photo.

Dan

[billtils]

Apologies to those of who commented on the image for my delay in follow-up but I've had a very frustrating time with the Lightroom catalog (but I'll deal with that in another post if I can get the problems to repeat). All I will say is that LR managed to "lose" the original of the image and all I could get from inside it was the thumbnail. I tried reloading from the CF card but got nowhere, as was the case by trying to open it from within Finder. I'm well aware that the root cause is my limited familiarity with LR but it was enough to make me look at going back to Capture One for the library and raw engine but the hassle made the cost in time and money not worth while (I still can't undestand why Phase One think it's a good idea to price Capture One at twice the cost of LR plus Photoshop, and since I'd keep PS anyway ...).

However the weather has been kind and here are a couple from yesterday with more gentle processing .





I know that the flower at the bottom left is a distraction but this is the closest of the shots in the last set to the original image.

[DanK]

Bill,

I think the first of these two is a real keeper: well composed, and with a very nice, smooth, undistracting background.

Re Lightroom: I strongly suspect that this is operator error. Lightroom does nothing whatever to your original image in the process of editing. However, it does allow you to delete the file from disk. If you mark a file for deletion, it then gives you a choice: remove (removes it from the catalog but leaves it on the disk), and delete from disk. In many years of using Lightroom, it has never lost a file, although I have sometimes inadvertently deleted one that I wanted to keep.

In windows, if you accidentally delete the file from within Lightroom, it sits in the recycle bin, and you can restore it and then re-sync that directory in Lightroom to bring it back into the catalog. I assume the Mac has something similar to the recycle bin.

[billtils]

Thanks Dan.

Wthout a doubt it was something I did (or didn't do) however, the original is still on the folder in the hard drive with all my other downloaded images BUT - it won't open in LR. If I right click and tell it to open in PS - no problem. I tried to get round it by copying to a folder on the desktop, but LR won't open from there either.

A side issue that I've encountered before is that when importing from the CF card, even when set to import new, it randomly imports not only the new images (ones not previously imported) but also those from the previous import and it loads them randomly not in chronological sequence.

The last batch (including those posted here) behaved perfectly. and imported only the new files in chronological order.

"Frustrated" doesn't do justice to how I feel.

[DanK]

Bill--with respect to the first, if the photo is still in the right folder on the hard drive, simply resynchronizing that folder from within the Lightroom library module should take care of the problem. I have to do this often because I get additional files in a given folder from stacking in Zerene.

Re the second problem: I think I know why it is happening, but my suggestion is simply not to import from the card. I always copy the files from a card to a folder I create for them. I then sync the folder that is the parent to the new one. This way, I have complete control over where things go, and if I have two shoots on the card, I can put the files in different folders.

When you import from the card, I think you have to tell it what to do with duplicates, if there are any. I just avoid that issue with the technique I use.

I also never leave files on a card after they are imported into Lightroom. My first step after importing (and sometimes initial culling) is to do my first, local backup. I then reformat the card in the camera. That way, I never have a problem with duplicates, and it is easier for me to keep track of where things go.

I hope this helps.

Dan

[pschlute]

Super detail here

[billtils]

Thanks Peter

[lovelife65]

love your macro work Bill! Always interesting and well done. The bee photos are stupendous.

[billtils]

Thanks Sharon - some of the more recent ones were a bit less than I'd have wished but was trying to get as much as possible out of what was possible in lockdown.