Moire....any suggestions?

[Phranquey]

I have had an occasional problem with moire creeping up. Mostly, my subject of interest is avian, and a few of the birds out there have very fine feathers which can create some annoying moire patterns. Case in point is my Blue & Gold. You can see the problem along his head.

Another particular bird I'm having a problem with is the Mallard. Their feathers are so fine, so as to shed water, that they create horrible moire. I recently shot some at the local duck pond that were beautiful pictures, but the moire was SO bad that it almost hurt your eyes just viewing the pictures. I wound up deleting them, though I wish I hadn't just to show here. I have some very good shots of other ducks, coots, grebes, and loons, which all have dense feathers for shedding water, but no moire in the photos.... that dang mallard is frustrating.

I did a search, but really only found explanations of what moire is, which I already know. Any suggestions on how to reduce or eliminate it?

 

[Sw1tchFX]

Can you shot a 100% section of the feathers so we can see how bad it is? because right now, all we see is the moire from the resize, not the actual image.

If it's really that common of a problem, shoot film.

 

[Phranquey]

OK, Sw1tchFX, moire was not any different from the full image to the resized one, but you did get me to look in a different direction, which was way into the picture. I thought the moire was coming from the lines of the feathers being fine enough to intersect with the lines of the CMOS sensor, but I was wrong....whew, it's got nothing to do with the camera. I was always looking at the picture as a whole, and never really zoomed WAY in to see that the moire was being created naturally from the crossed detail in the feathers themselves......

Talk about a blonde moment....Thanks, I think. 22 years behind the camera, and I just figure this one out, yeah, thanks ALOT....:blushing:

Now all I need to do is take a comb out into the field to straighten out those messy feathers......:mrgreen:

 

[Meysha]

Wow... Awesome bird!

Glad you two sorted out that problem. Woo!! Go TPF!

 

[Garbz]

I was going to say coming into this thread I always thought DSLRs had quite sophisticated anti-moire measures.

Photographing birds has tripped me up in the past as well so I won't hold it against you

 

[confucious]

Would softening the pic help at all by reducing the impact of the crossing lines? I imagine they are only that bad when really really sharp. I know it would also soften (obviously) the rest of the bird, but if it is so bad it hurts your eyes, any improvement would be better.

Good luck.