I am trying to decide which is the best of these three shots. Please be harsh (if you think one/all of them are boring or whatever please let me know).

The first shot is of a mother and young clapper rail. The second shot is of a least bittern and the last shot is of a pine warbler.

Thanks,

Greg

I love the bird in the second picture, that one realy stands out inb my opinion, the other two are nice enough photographs though, though i do prefer the third above the first.

Be harsh...OK :D
The first photo is boring...not very interesting for a none bird lover. The colors aren't all that great and the composition is so so.
The second photo is spectacular! The composition is very pleasing and the pose of the bird really captures my attention. I like how it has captured dinner and the lighting on that guy is amazing. Very nice contrast against the darker sky. Bird photos don't do it for me, but this photo would hang on my wall. Sweet!
The third is solid and has great dof. It is a bird shot with the subject very well detailed and captured very nicely, but it still doesn't do anything for me.

The third one wins hands down and that is my honest opinion.
Cheers.

Thanks for your opinions, I really appreciate it, especially the harsh ones. I know that fir non-bird people certain birds that aren’t interesting that would be for bird lovers. To me opinions like that are very useful. Planted, I take it that you meant that the second shot was the winner and not the third?

Thanks,

Greg

Hi Greg,

To start off, all three shots are very good when compared to what us non-bird-shooters (myself included) do. High caliber images. All of them look oversharpened for the web resize though. I'd back off on that just a tad.

As far as wich is best, I agree with PT. #2 is just a standout! Very nice.

I've seen similar renditions of the first and third.
BR,
Tim

Thanks for the thoughtful input. Sharpening for web viewing is a very tricky thing as is scaling down images for web viewing. These are all full frame images (no cropping) so obviously they are getting scaled down quite a bit. I am not sure what the best way is to scale down images to web size in order to maintain maximum detail and this is something I would love to learn more about.

Sherpening is also a tricky thing. In the past I would scale down images and not sharpen them as they looked plenty sharp on my screen. I got lots of comments saying they weren’t sharp enough and needed sharpening. As a result I started sharpening them after scale down to the point that they looked ok on my screen. I never really liked the sharpening but they didn’t look crazy sharpened either. Again any suggestions about how to sharpen scaled-down images would be greatly appreciated.

Greg

Doh! :o
Yeah - the second photo is the best. :)
Just a really unique pose and when I look at it a second time the more I enjoy it.
Cheers.

Hi Greg,
Sharpening is an art. Subjects look like cardboard cutouts when sharpened too much. But, you do need to sharpen when you resize for the web -- especially when coming down from hi-res. I use Paintshop Pro, and I set the radius to be 0.5 to 0.75 pixels for this, and I'll vary the Strength and Clipping as needed. Clipping is very important in avoiding adding noise to similar tones things (like the blue sky). I forget the names of PhotoShops parameters, but they do the same thing.

Finally, I always preview the image in my web browser off my local drive before uploading. I find that web browsers often render different than my photo software.

Again, great shots,
Tim

Greg

I think they are all worthy captures but #1 is lacking something a old log or something or a bush i dont know but something is missing .
#2 is a great capture its vibrant colors and the pose the bird is giving you is superb.

#3 Is very good also but it seems to be lacking in sharpness on the left i dont know if it was intentional or not , but it still makes for a good wild bird photo.

All in all a very good series keep up the good shooting :)


Glenn

Thanks for the tips. How do you go about re-sampling your images for web viewing? I guess the sharpening thing is really tough since these don’t look oversharpened on my screen. Usually I look for those little white edges to see when the sharpening has gone too far. I think maybe the problem that is happening has more to do with the jaggies that are created during re-sizing but maybe I am wrong about that.

Greg

Greg,

To web-preview, just enter the drive/directory/filename into your browser's address bar.
Tim

They're all good, #2 is best by far.

#3 is just another little bird on a branch.
#1 is better, but the light is rather flat. Having what looks like a pair is a good catch.
What sets #2 apart for me is the lighting.

Have to go with the crowd here. #2 is great.

Thanks for that tip but I guess I am not being clear about what I am trying to figure out. It seems that there is a pretty big variance between displays. If I view my pictures on my monitor the pictures do not appear to be oversharpened though I can see some jaggies that have occurred during the re-sampling process. When I sharpen the pictures the jaggies become more obvious. What I am trying to figure out is how to re-size my images to 600 or so lines of resolution while maintaining the maximum amount of detail.

In the past I have used the bi-cubic resize in PS and wasn’t thrilled with the results. More recently I have been trying software that does a "smart resize." I have found that it tends to cause more jaggies but does seem to yield more detail.

How does everyone do their re-sizing to keep artifacts away and retain as much detail as possible. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Greg

Ahhhhh. I see what you are asking. IMHO, those jaggies are hard to avoid. They are there even if you don't sharpen (but sharpeneing will make them more pronounced). There are two techniques that I've read about and have used to moderate success...

1. If you shoot RAW, resize from the RAW or TIFF image (trying the many different interpolation methods). Thus, you start off with the highest detail. If you resize from a JPEG, then you got one foot in the grave already.

2. Do a fine gausean blur on the angled straight line(s) before the resize. This way, the pixel values along that line may have more variation after the resize. This option is a lot of work though...

But Greg when I talk about oversharpened, look at your first shot. The subjects appear very flat (like paper doll cutouts almost). Does it look this way in your off-the-camera image? If so, I'd suggest turning down in-camera sharpening (only a factor if shooting JPEGs). Other wise, it just has too much USM after you downsized it.

BR,
Tim

I think this has a lot more to do with the DOF than anything. My in camera sharpening is -2 (the lowest setting you can have). When you are dealing with 700mm of focal length, f/5.6 and only a few meters distance the DOF is pretty shallow and you get the effect you are talking about. I don’t know if that is going to be able to be avoided with this type of setup.

The USM used is very small (in fact much less than normal). For the images I used Fred Miranda’s Intellisharpen II plug in for photoshop. The settings I used were low ISO, sharpen level of 20, 0% halo and reduce color noise. After I resized I then used the same settings only the sharpen level was dropped to 5 from 20.

I find it difficult to believe that there was too much sharpening since I normally use even higher settings than that and get no complaints of oversharpening.

The lack of sharpening is what is leading me to believe that the problem has to do with the re-sampling process but your last comment makes me think it is more of a DOF issue than anything. Maybe I am reading it wrong but that is my understanding at this point.

How do you normally re-size your pictures for web viewing?

Thanks,

Greg

Hmmmmm. Maybe it is DOF with that long lens. But, the grass behind the clapper rail looks in focus. Again, take a look at the original off camera image before any processing when you get the chance. Does it look the same?

I think they are all pretty decent. The first one had less going on for me - although I like the "pose" of the bird on the left. It's the least interesting of the three. I LOVE the lighting on the bird's legs in the second shot. The last one is beautiful and perfect - but I think the middle one does it for me the most because of the lighting.

Megan

The second image by far is my favorite. It has much more engaging lighting and form to it than the other two. Simply an awesome shot. Well done :D