Doing some testing, need a little C&C

[robbins.photo]

Ok, tried out a few things today and I'm hoping I can get some C&C on this pic - I'm curious to see what the experts think.


688 by robbins.photo, on Flickr

Thanks in advance folks.

 

[pjaye]

No comment except I like it, cus you know, I'm definitely not an expert.

 

[EIngerson]

Nice image, I'm not a fan of the crop thought. I'd give the birds head more room to the left and above. I don't think that much of the tail is important enough to the image to keep all that dead space on the lower left also. I think I'd have the feet at the lower third and the eyes at the upper third.

 

[BillM]

Well if forced to nitpick I'd like to see a little more space around the bird, it looks a little cramped in the frame. And not sure if it is the display on my laptop but the red on the head looks a little blown out ?

 

[Derrel]

It's obviously a bird. On a stick! With an overly-saturated red head. And exceedingly blue wing feathers. And an addiction to M&M's and Jack Daniels. It's all so clear now.

 

[Ysarex122 116]

Nice primary colors. As Derrel noted you're red channels is nuked. Any chance you've got an NEF file?

Joe

 

[robbins.photo]

Nice primary colors. As Derrel noted you're red channels is nuked. Any chance you've got an NEF file?

Joe

Yes and no actually. I have one, but I'm trying to avoid using it at all costs. That is more or less what I was hoping to see, how much I could accomplish with just the JPG.

 

[EIngerson]

It's obviously a bird. On a stick! With an overly-saturated red head. And exceedingly blue wing feathers. And an addiction to M&M's and Jack Daniels. It's all so clear now.

I caught the M&M's but I didn't even realize the addiction to Jack Daniels until you you mentioned it. I now find this image completely repulsive.

 

[Derrel]

See how he's gripping the stick, legs all splayed out, and he's leaning over? That's the Jack Daniels effect...

 

[robbins.photo]

See how he's gripping the stick, legs all splayed out, and he's leaning over? That's the Jack Daniels effect...

Well I've found there much easier to shoot that way - if you can get them hammered first. Thing is you kind of have to be sneaky about it, apparently there is some "rule" about how your not supposed to feed the birds liquor. Zoo's and their silly rules. Sheesh.

Lol

 

[robbins.photo]

It's obviously a bird. On a stick! With an overly-saturated red head. And exceedingly blue wing feathers. And an addiction to M&M's and Jack Daniels. It's all so clear now.

I caught the M&M's but I didn't even realize the addiction to Jack Daniels until you you mentioned it. I now find this image completely repulsive.

Yup.. you caught me. Homeless parrot porn. I shall run off now and be ashamed. Oh wait.. Supernatural is on - ok, so in about half an hour or so I will run off and hang my head in shame.

 

[Ysarex122 116]

Nice primary colors. As Derrel noted you're red channels is nuked. Any chance you've got an NEF file?

Joe

Yes and no actually. I have one, but I'm trying to avoid using it at all costs. That is more or less what I was hoping to see, how much I could accomplish with just the JPG.

I downloaded the photo and took a closer look. Wow. There are actually spots on that bird's head where the blue and green channels are clipped on the low end and the red channel is clipped on the high end -- absolute pure red: R = 255, G = 0, B = 0 and so total loss of detail. I'm guessing you didn't do that in processing the JPEG so your camera's EXPEED processor bares the guilt. You found the perfect photo to illustrate a classic limitation of camera JPEGs. I devote a lot of time to photographing my wife's flowers -- same problem. Rose petals (like feathers) have lots of texture unless the camera obliterates it by clipping color channels. The only solution sans raw file is to adjust the camera controls to damage the photo in ways that can be repaired (forced underexposure and saturation reduction) and then fix that damage as best possible. In the case of this parrot the camera software damaged the photo in a way that can't be repaired. If you restrict the option to camera software processing you're left with two choices that both require you begin with a bad photo. A raw capture is the only way out of that trap.

Joe

 

[robbins.photo]

Nice primary colors. As Derrel noted you're red channels is nuked. Any chance you've got an NEF file?

Joe

Yes and no actually. I have one, but I'm trying to avoid using it at all costs. That is more or less what I was hoping to see, how much I could accomplish with just the JPG.

I downloaded the photo and took a closer look. Wow. There are actually spots on that bird's head where the blue and green channels are clipped on the low end and the red channel is clipped on the high end -- absolute pure red: R = 255, G = 0, B = 0 and so total loss of detail. I'm guessing you didn't do that in processing the JPEG so your camera's EXPEED processor bares the guilt. You found the perfect photo to illustrate a classic limitation of camera JPEGs. I devote a lot of time to photographing my wife's flowers -- same problem. Rose petals (like feathers) have lots of texture unless the camera obliterates it by clipping color channels. The only solution sans raw file is to adjust the camera controls to damage the photo in ways that can be repaired (forced underexposure and saturation reduction) and then fix that damage as best possible. In the case of this parrot the camera software damaged the photo in a way that can't be repaired. If you restrict the option to camera software processing you're left with two choices that both require you begin with a bad photo. A raw capture is the only way out of that trap.

Joe

Which is pretty much why I chose the subject I chose, I wanted the toughest one I could find for the JPG test. I can still save the shot itself, I do have a RAW file of it, but wanted to see what other folks might notice without any pre-bias.

 

[The_Traveler]

There is a composition problem here. With such a long subject, and not much environment, you've tried to keep the entire tail in to show it and you ended up clipping it anyway while you stuffed him/her in the top left corner.
And its not actually sharp.

 

[Ysarex122 116]

Yes and no actually. I have one, but I'm trying to avoid using it at all costs. That is more or less what I was hoping to see, how much I could accomplish with just the JPG.

I downloaded the photo and took a closer look. Wow. There are actually spots on that bird's head where the blue and green channels are clipped on the low end and the red channel is clipped on the high end -- absolute pure red: R = 255, G = 0, B = 0 and so total loss of detail. I'm guessing you didn't do that in processing the JPEG so your camera's EXPEED processor bares the guilt. You found the perfect photo to illustrate a classic limitation of camera JPEGs. I devote a lot of time to photographing my wife's flowers -- same problem. Rose petals (like feathers) have lots of texture unless the camera obliterates it by clipping color channels. The only solution sans raw file is to adjust the camera controls to damage the photo in ways that can be repaired (forced underexposure and saturation reduction) and then fix that damage as best possible. In the case of this parrot the camera software damaged the photo in a way that can't be repaired. If you restrict the option to camera software processing you're left with two choices that both require you begin with a bad photo. A raw capture is the only way out of that trap.

Joe

Which is pretty much why I chose the subject I chose, I wanted the toughest one I could find for the JPG test. I can still save the shot itself, I do have a RAW file of it, but wanted to see what other folks might notice without any pre-bias.

Yep, you picked a good one. In my job teaching college students I get hands-on with basically all the current hardware out there and this topic eventually has to come up in class as my students start bringing in photos. I'll go on record here and say there are plenty of highly saturated color subjects out there that none of the JPEG engines are up to task to handle. They all screw up. In those cases the cameras' auto white balance setting should just be renamed crash and burn. That's the first thing to do: You must set a custom white balance for the JPEG engine otherwise there's no hope at all. They'll still screw up but it may be partially repairable.

I just worked through this same issue with my class last week. We had some really nice crisp winter days and I got a pile of landscapes from my students with badly clipped blue channels (winter sky). I've been after all of them to start setting a custom white balance if they want decent JPEGs but that's too much trouble for them -- grrrrrr.

I wrote up some notes for them along with example photos here's an excerpt from the notes:

Unfortunately that intense blue sky shows up a lot and the cameras screw it up a lot. Intense colors in flowers like red roses or yellow day lilies are another achilles heel and they botch those too. This drives me absolutely nuts because I don't know what to do about it when teaching these classes. Seriously, I lose sleep over this. I think it's completely legit for people to learn to use these cameras now and make the choice to rely on the JPEG output from the cameras. If I had set a custom white balance in the above photo the error wouldn't be as bad but the camera would still have clipped the blue channel -- I've tried it. Underexposing to prevent the channel clipping is a bad idea. The camera's have a saturation adjustment that could be lowered and that would help, but that also reduces saturation where it shouldn't be reduced. Learning to repair it is nuts and I'm not happy just tolerating it. It causes me anxiety because when I get a similar photo from a student I don't have a good solution and that feels very uncomfortable. Not everyone has a camera with raw capture capability or should be forced to use their camera that way. It's a no win then.

Joe