• Members 216 posts
    May 28, 2023, 4:17 a.m.

    I personally don't like trying to create detail in areas that are not in focus , If the eye falls outside of what is sharp for me sharpening it to make it look sharp adds artifacts that I really don't care for. This also introduces artifacts into the out of focus areas that can also introduce ugly out of focus transitions.
    But this is just me and what I prefer when photographing wildlife. If the eye is your goal to have in focus then it should be

  • Members 2288 posts
    May 28, 2023, 4:28 a.m.

    the image is not about eye focus. i was challenging the jpeg haters and so far i win. 24 hours and not one challenge image . i will post another of my King Charles later.

  • Members 216 posts
    May 28, 2023, 4:31 a.m.

    My discussion was about processing and how people like to try and pull detail out of an area that is OOF

  • Members 216 posts
    May 28, 2023, 4:36 a.m.

    Processing and how it should be done is a personal preference for myself and for wildlife photography my preference is to have a image with a more realistic appears that over a lot of the high contrast and tonal curves that produce eye candy that many seem to like ( this is not my thing)
    Also the mood that is set by the WB is another key factor that is a personal preference as a great deal of what I shot is in golden hour light or warmer richer light
    This can and is very hard to create with in camera WB

  • Members 216 posts
    May 28, 2023, 4:52 a.m.

    Well if you are shooting for ETTR the color channels are important, setting up you camera for ETTR is one of the key 2 factors that go into creating images when exposing for raw. The other is setting up the converter for those images taken for exposing raw and this has everything to do with how the color channels are saturated. From just following you and your replies I can clearly see that none of these factors are even thought about in your style of photography and clearly that you are not exposing to the right when clearly you think your are.

  • Members 976 posts
    May 28, 2023, 5:35 a.m.

    That's not what I asked you.

  • Members 360 posts
    May 28, 2023, 5:38 a.m.

    Somehow, I feel unchallenged.
    A) Did not see the challenge.
    B) Did not see the benchmark.
    C) Did not see the goal/request detail.

    You missed on all vital points of proper open fair challenge. All I see is bragging.

    You also seem to be less than right on the conclusions. You are actually not right if you support your own case, dismissing other cases.

    And so this way one doesn't want to even enter such challege, as it is for nothing. Maybe for birds pooing on chessboard.

  • Members 360 posts
    May 28, 2023, 5:40 a.m.

    Believe it or not, my M6 gives more informative/accurate luminance histogram compared to color channels histogram. Regarding ETTR, anyways...

  • Members 976 posts
    May 28, 2023, 5:41 a.m.

    Chess and pigeons.

  • Members 49 posts
    May 28, 2023, 6:09 a.m.

    "It's perfect!"

    "It's bad."

    "But I was going for bad, and I nailed it! So it's perfect!"

    "umm.... okay...."

  • Members 202 posts
    May 28, 2023, 6:31 a.m.

    The hosting site went down. It is rare for it to do that and I expect it back soon.

  • Members 202 posts
    May 28, 2023, 6:45 a.m.

    You made curious choices about the exposure. Why such a fast shutter speed? Was f/4 a better choice than f/5.6, or even f/8, given the background? While we're talking about your "perfect" choices, why not focus on the bird's eye?

  • Members 2288 posts
    May 28, 2023, 6:55 a.m.

    which part dont you understand ? convert the posted raw so that its better than the jpeg file out of camera. its simple , but obviously not so simple.

  • Members 49 posts
    May 28, 2023, 6:59 a.m.

    So, there have been a lot of posts here and I admit I may have missed it, but I don't remember seeing where you posted the raw file. Could you repost the link to it (or to the post where you originally put it, that would be fine too) along with the jpeg? I'll take a shot at it.

  • Members 202 posts
    May 28, 2023, 7:03 a.m.

    It was as simple as pressing "Auto" everything in ACR, and then cranking up Topaz AI and apply NR and "Enhance resolution" to a luminosity layer followed by a mask of the beak and lowering the opacity there so it was more pleasant to my eye.

  • Members 202 posts
    May 28, 2023, 7:06 a.m.

    Other than Iliah posting the embedded JPEG, we have not seen Donald's "unsurpassed" JPEG. What I saw in Iliah's post was soft detail, low contrast, and a tad warmer WB than what I would have used. Funny thing (to me) is that I hadn't even seen the embedded JPEG before doing the conversion, and then went back and cropped the embedded version to match mine side-by-side.

  • Members 49 posts
    May 28, 2023, 7:23 a.m.

    Tony, thanks for the pointer to the raw.

    Working on it for a bit, here's about what I would do as a first cut. Where's the SOOC jpeg to compare it with again? Other than the embedded one that I saw before...

    I'm not a pro at this, so aside from the ongoing debate, feedback is welcome. :-)
    A7M01521.jpg

    A7M01521.jpg

    JPG, 6.3 MB, uploaded by chd on May 28, 2023.

  • May 28, 2023, 7:29 a.m.

    You didn't get the rules of Don's little game. He's not putting up the JPEG until everyone's had a go at the raw conversion. Then he'll declare that the JPEG is better than any. The JPEG will probably have been subjected to all kinds of manipulation, but that's within Don's rules. And it doesn't matter whether anyone else thinks it's better, because Don makes the rules - and he's already declared that it was a great shot.