Rufous Hummingbird, feml

Gallery: AvianPosted July 7, 2011100 views10 comments

Taken spring of 2010. This was a very noisy image and still has significant noise, however I have cloned much of the BG and used noise reduction. Candid honest opinion really wanted. Thanks.

Olympus E-610
50-200mm F 2.8
aperture priority
monopod

Large view

Comments

10 comments

Comment posted by Howard Cheek on July 7, 2011 at 7:58 PM

Well done in general Charlie, I like the POV a lot.
It would help if you stated how much of the original I'm looking at..
Your BG patterns look like the result of excessive NR and/or cropping.
The general rule of thumb is if it ain't there to start with, no amount of PS will save it

Registered on July 24, 2008, 1201 Posts, 10758 Comments

Comment posted by Ron Dudley on July 7, 2011 at 8:46 PM

Hi Charlie, You got a very nice, close look at the bird in flight and I like the light and the blurred wings but IMO your efforts to improve the image have left some significant artifacts. I agree with Howard's last statement.

Registered on March 30, 2007, 437 Posts, 10915 Comments

Comment posted by Brian Gatlin on July 7, 2011 at 9:03 PM

Charlie, I think the bird looks quite good, but the bg processing is a little heavy for me. I'd be interested in seeing this with the original bg.

Registered on March 21, 2009, 202 Posts, 4187 Comments

Comment posted by Angela McCain on July 7, 2011 at 10:41 PM

The bird, though, is an excellent piece of work. We're all waiting on the original.

Registered on April 19, 2009, 367 Posts, 3589 Comments

Comment posted by Charlie Baugh on July 7, 2011 at 11:47 PM

Ok, here is the original only converted to .jpg from Olympus RAW. Nothing done to it at all.

Registered on April 18, 2011, 329 Posts, 1985 Comments

Comment posted by Dennis Plank on July 7, 2011 at 11:49 PM

The bird looks good in this image, Charlie. The bg seems to have some kind of compression issue. I'm seeing banding in it and that usually seems to be the cause, though I've seen it caused by a combination of noise reduction and sharpening in a couple of my images-I haven't found any consistency to when it appears. I like the pose of the Hummingbird and the blur of the wings, so to me, it probably would be worth working on a bit more.

It's always hard to tell from an original reduced to 720 pixels, but it doesn't look that noisy to me. I use an after market noise reduction software rather than Photoshops and I suspect it would work on this image, though it's always hard to know for sure. If you'd like, I'll give it a try.

Registered on January 28, 2008, 1767 Posts, 23192 Comments

Comment posted by John Robinson on July 8, 2011 at 7:26 AM

Spot on ! You can see the background areas mentioned.
The original doesn't look too bad to me.
JohnR

Registered on March 2, 2008, 535 Posts, 2453 Comments

Comment posted by Charlie Baugh on July 8, 2011 at 10:16 AM

Yea, John, that was my reaction after digging out the RAW file. I think I may have fooled with this shot so much at a time I had little experience at noise correction and cloning, that starting over with the RAW is the way to go.

Registered on April 18, 2011, 329 Posts, 1985 Comments

Comment posted by May Haga on July 8, 2011 at 4:45 PM

Beautiful image Charlie. The hummer is looking right at us.
May

Registered on February 22, 2007, 714 Posts, 8470 Comments

Comment posted by David Sparks on July 9, 2011 at 10:18 AM

Nice detail in the hummer, good eye contact and I like the wing blur. Noise doesn't look bad in the original to me either. Starting over from the RAW file seems like a good strategy and worth doing.

Registered on May 26, 2007, 290 Posts, 4270 Comments