Great colours, focus a bit soft on the neck. Good light and tone for this subject.
David
not so ugly duckling
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Re: not so ugly duckling
thanks david,and i see what you mean about the focus
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Re: not so ugly duckling
Ummmmmmm. Mallard. Good eating! Anyone for roast duck tonight?
It looks real enough to reach out and grab him!
Dusty
It looks real enough to reach out and grab him!
Dusty
An a700, an a550 and couple of a580s, plus even more lenses (Zeiss included!).
Re: not so ugly duckling
Such a beautiful water fowl. Mighty fine vittles if I may add. It is said that no two ducks have the same call. However, the domesticated white duck and the Mallard have the same call.
Food for thought,
Cam
Food for thought,
Cam
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Re: not so ugly duckling
I can never get a good shot of a bird. They're probably one of the more challenging subjects for a camera, being very demanding for sharpness of detail. If there's a trick to getting it right, I haven't discovered it yet. That said, I wonder how complicated it would be to clone out that bottle on the left?
And I should add, welcome to the forum, Cameron!
And I should add, welcome to the forum, Cameron!
Kevin Barrett
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Re: not so ugly duckling
At least part of the time, I'm pretty sure soft-looking areas in some pictures of waterfowl are an optical illusion. In some cases, there's a soft-looking area even though areas that are both closer and farther away are clearly sharp and within the DoF. For example, on this shot of a Mallard, the beak is sharp, and so is the back (covering both closer and farther away) but around the same part of the back of the neck, it's a bit soft looking.David Kilpatrick wrote:Great colours, focus a bit soft on the neck. Good light and tone for this subject.
David
On the other hand, when he shifts his pose a bit, the "softness" disappears:
and even in a 100% crop, the neck looks nice and sharp, though now the top of the head looks a bit soft:
(Both shots: K/M 7D, Tamron 70-210/2.8 @ 210mm).
Last edited by jcoffin on Tue Feb 03, 2009 1:05 am, edited 1 time in total.
Re: not so ugly duckling
thanks for the welcome cameron, i'm usually the same with pics of birds, just got a bit lucky this time, the bottle was actually a submerged wooden sort of perching post or something, but it does look like a bottleKevinBarrett wrote:I can never get a good shot of a bird. They're probably one of the more challenging subjects for a camera, being very demanding for sharpness of detail. If there's a trick to getting it right, I haven't discovered it yet. That said, I wonder how complicated it would be to clone out that bottle on the left?
And I should add, welcome to the forum, Cameron!
Re: not so ugly duckling
sorry kevin got that wrong
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Re: not so ugly duckling
[...and included an attachment that seemed (to me) to show approximately that].jcoffin wrote: and even in a 100% crop, the neck looks nice and sharp, though now the top of the head looks a bit soft:
Looking at it a bit more, I decided I didn't like the conversion much. For fun, I tried a conversion with Bibble instead of ACR, and got this:
This result seems to fit with my expectations a bit better: I focused reasonably well on the eye (or maybe a bit closer) and parts that are farther away go out of focus as expected. The DoF is shallow, but that's expected under the circumstances (210mm, f/3.5, ~10 feet away).
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Re: not so ugly duckling
Hi Gio (is that your name?),gio67 wrote:sorry kevin got that wrong
Welcome to the forum -- nice shot. I hope you don't mind my adding a few more to the thread. Mine definitely don't show the colors nearly as nicely, but the point about sharpness caught my attention and I got a bit carried away. Sorry 'bout that.
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Re: not so ugly duckling
Sometimes, bird are a poor target for autofocus mechanisms, and you're usually working with a long lens, so DOF is precious. Double check the focus, and sometimes you can focus on the branch/ground instead of the bird. They also tend to have very quick, quirky movements when not in flight, so they can move a millimeter in a 1/100 sec shot. Small birds are worse for that, but watch a Bald Eagle sometimes in a zoo.KevinBarrett wrote:I can never get a good shot of a bird. They're probably one of the more challenging subjects for a camera, being very demanding for sharpness of detail. If there's a trick to getting it right, I haven't discovered it yet. That said, I wonder how complicated it would be to clone out that bottle on the left?
And I should add, welcome to the forum, Cameron!
Dusty
An a700, an a550 and couple of a580s, plus even more lenses (Zeiss included!).
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Re: not so ugly duckling
Waterfowl by their very nature are oily - that's the secret of repelling water! Look at your shot #1 and see how the water actually beads up in his back feathers. Sometimes this can give you that optical illusion that it's OOF, but if you take other feathers, coat them lightly with some baby oil, and shift their positions in the light, you should be able to see this. Not only will the oil kill the fluffy feather details, but it can also give it a matte look.jcoffin wrote:At least part of the time, I'm pretty sure soft-looking areas in some pictures of waterfowl are an optical illusion. In some cases, there's a soft-looking area even though areas that are both closer and farther away are clearly sharp and within the DoF. For example, on this shot of a Mallard, the beak is sharp, and so is the back (covering both closer and farther away) but around the same part of the back of the neck, it's a bit soft looking.
(Both shots: K/M 7D, Tamron 70-210/2.8 @ 210mm).
Dusty
An a700, an a550 and couple of a580s, plus even more lenses (Zeiss included!).
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Re: not so ugly duckling
Did I say Hi to Cameron?
Nice shots Gio67.
Nice shots Gio67.
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