A walk in the park

[Grumpy John]

Motivated by the fact that I spotted a Yellow Tailed Black Cockatoo on my walk yesterday I took the 7D with the 70-200 Siggy on my walk today. Of course Murphy was in charge and no sign of the Yellow Tail. I did manage to obtain a few half decent captures, however the 70-200 is no match for the 150-600.

#1 Long Billed Corella.


#2 Crested Pigeon. This shot seems a bit soft to me, in fact all the shots of the Crested Pigeons that I took seemed soft. Maybe the colours of the bird make it hard for the camera to focus.


#3 Eastern Rosella. Heavily cropped and poor IQ. Only added to prove that I saw them. (Must take 150-600 next time)


#4 Galah.


#5 Straw Necked Ibis.


#6 Footy season is almost here. Go the mighty 'Pies.


#7 Masked Lapwing. I really struggled to try and get rid of the post in the background, could do with some tips on how to eliminate / reduce the impact of the post. The chain is not a big problem.

[Isac]

Good to see you out and about and getting some bird shots John. Are you using spot focus on the birds eyes? It looks a bit front focused on a couple of them. The galah looks a bit OS but other than that, good shots of birds doing what they do and a good variety. I did the same thing this morning, up at the lake with the 18-400. I'll post later. Cheers.

[Isac]

Removing the post is a quick edit John. You have probably removed the chain with Content Aware which worked great for me. After that, make a mask of the bird - don't worry about the legs, just the parts you are going to change behind the bird where the post is. Then, copy fence parts to a new layer and move it to behind the bird. A bit of soft cloning and erasing and all done. I think a crop but that's up to you.

[HansE]

The grass in front of the pigeon is definitely in focus. Looks like a little more care is required or a bit more dof. I like the magpie.

[Grumpy John]

Yes, the focus on the pigeon shot is definitely on the grass in front of the bird. I have deleted the files of the CF card, but I will try and restore them and post images of where I was focused on the birds.

[Grumpy John]

Good to see you out and about and getting some bird shots John. Are you using spot focus on the birds eyes? It looks a bit front focused on a couple of them. The galah looks a bit OS but other than that, good shots of birds doing what they do and a good variety. I did the same thing this morning, up at the lake with the 18-400. I'll post later. Cheers.

Thanks for the feedback Isac.
I used a variety of focus settings including Expand AF area (surround), Expand AF area and Manual select; Spot AF. I agree that on a few images they seem front focused, and on some they seem quite reasonable. I think that I will get me one of these and take my time and calibrate my lenses.

The Galah does look OS but I did very little PP work on that image as you can see below. Just some highlight/shadow adjustments and a nudge of Vibrance and Clarity. I went back and set everything back to default and the colour was still very strong.

[Grumpy John]

Thank you Isac and HansE for your comments regarding the focus issues on the above images. I tried to recover the .CR2 files from the CF card but was only successful in retrieving 4 of the 7 files.

AI Servo mode was used for all images.

Here is the info I can give you:

Image #1 I was unable to recover the file but the EXIF data is f2.8, 1/1000, ISO100 and Focus Mode was AF Point expansion.

Image #2 Also unable to recover the file. EXIF data f2.8, 1/1000, ISO800 and Focus Mode was AF Point expansion.

Image #3 f2.8, 1/1000, ISO100. Focus Mode was AF Point expansion. This is a screenshot from DPP and the red square indicates where the camera locked focus.


Image #4 f2.8, 1/1000. ISO100. Focus mode was Spot AF.


Image #5 f2.8, 1/1000. ISO125. Focus mode was Spot AF.

Image #6 f2.8, 1/1000. ISO100. Focus mode was Spot AF.


Image #7 Also unable to recover the file. EXIF data f2.8, 1/1000, ISO160 and Focus Mode was Spot AF.

For the Non Canon readers here is an explanation of the focus modes I used.

[Isac]

If you're really having focus issues, maybe the dock will be the way to go. With the over saturation I'd check your Picture Style settings. Here's a good look at how to set them. HERE.
I use a USER DEF set like this for my birds, flowers etc and different settings for landscapes etc.

Try this for the Galah shot. Hue saturation is tricky in ACR so in PS just add an HSL adjustment layer and lower the pink. After adjusting the saturation of the pink, you can also slide up the Lightness at bit, which will only effect the colour group you selected when you first clicked on the pink in the image. HSL is a really great tool to hone in on a small group of colours that you need to adjust. This is a combo of different screenshots. I hope this helps a bit.

[Grumpy John]

I shouldn't need to play with the Picture Style Settings as I've not changed them since I bought the camera. Every other photo I've taken was done with the same settings.

I did go back and had another look at my PP work on this image. Initially I let ACR do the exposure settings by selecting Auto, I reset everything back to default and just did my usual lens correction.

This is basically SOOC.

[Isac]

OK. All good. If you didn't adjust the saturation or vibrance then it must be good. Did my adjustment look bad?

[Grumpy John]

Hard to tell on the small image, but it looked okay. Thanks for taking the time to have a look at it. There were a few Galah's in the immediate area and they all looked really healthy and were very pink on the chest.

[Isac]

I remember having a pink chest when I used to be healthy