Chickadees

[Round Tuit]

The first two shots are the only keepers in a batch of around 50 that I took last Saturday. I find that capturing these common birds very challenging for two reasons; they fly fast and do not perch for more than a few seconds at a time which makes getting a focus lock on them very difficult with my slow focusing kit lens. Secondly, unless they stand at the exact right angle, their coloring hides their eyes and sometimes even their beaks. Shots three and four are extreme examples of this problem.

1


2


3


4


As usual, C & C are welcomed

[DanK]

This is a really tough problem because the difference in luminance between the eye, beak, and head feathers is very, very small. I have the same problem with the heads of bumblebees. However, I think there are steps you can take to make this less severe.

First, these are substantially underexposed. Given the black in those areas, that means that you have very little detail to work with in post. Expose to the right, and you'll have more to work with.

I tried quick edits #1 and #3. I got nowhere with #3. However, I was able to improve #1 a bit with some relatively simple edits. First, here's the result:



I did four things in Photoshop:

1. I brightened the whole image with a curve
2. I selected the bird and further brightened it.
3. I slightly brightened midtones with a levels adjustment, masked it, and painted it back onto the head with a brush. This helped only a tiny bit.
4. I made a new pixel layer from all of the ones below, put on a mask mask, inverted the mask to black, and set it to screen blend mode. Then I painted over the head.

[Geoff F]

Birds flitting around in trees are certainly a tricky subject. Besides not having sufficient focus time, auto focus often focuses on a sharp looking bit of twig instead of the desired soft edged bird. All larger lenses have a rather slow focus time.

A lot of rejects is to be expected but although you slightly under exposed the subjects you still have some good feather detail

[Round Tuit]

Thank you Dan and Geoff.
I had inadvertently under exposed the whole set. I like what you did Dan. This week looks rather busy but as soon as I can I will go back to the raw file, raise the exposure from there then see what I can get.