The Flasher

[griffljg]

A rainbow lorikeet giving us an underbelly view.

If you're wondering about the high ISO, I ran the ORF file through DxO PureRAW to take care of the noise, before importing the resulting DNG file into Capture One Pro for highlight and shadow recovery.


The Flasher by Laurence Griffiths, on Flickr

[Isac]

Great colours in this shot Laurence. Unusual but very good pose. We have lots of them squawking and flying around at our local lake and they do make for great photos. I notice you use a lot of different software for your processing. Nice result though

[griffljg]

Thank you for your comment.

They are really comical little birds. But I wish they would stop scaring the other birds from my back yard. Even the noisy miners are terrified of them. A couple of big crows have been seen to come calling......... Briefly! Yesterday three brave galahs tried their luck. They fought back and the rainbow lorikeets withdrew to a holding position.

Regarding software, I currently use Capture One Pro for raw file conversion and editing while, for photos which have ISO values of over 1600 on the OM-1, I will first run them through DxO PureRAW first to take care of the noise, before importing the resulting DNG into Capture One Pro for further editing.

The first raw file convertor which I used was Bibble Pro (now Corel AfterShot Pro), which I chose because it was the best raw file convertor which I could find which supported the Linux operating system which my personal desktop was running. That was about 15 years or more ago.

When I bought my first Mac in mid-2012, I decided to give Adobe Lightroom a try. I was impressed and used it until Adobe started making mutterings about subscription models. At that stage, I started looking for alternatives. Phase One's Capture One Pro looked most impressive. Unfortunately, so was the price. - About twice the cost of Lightroom! So I decided to wait a bit...... Then Phase One offered Capture One Pro at a 50% discount. - I jumped!

As I am now almost exclusively using micro four-thirds (MFT) equipment with its smaller sensor, noise has become more of an issue when using higher ISOs. Initially, I tried (and liked and bought) Topaz DeNoise AI, which worked fairly well, even though I found it to be a bit too fiddly for my taste. Then a friend suggested that I try DxO PureRAW. I did and was sold. I briefly returned to Topaz earlier this year when DxO were a bit tardy in providing support for my new OMSystem (Olympus) OM-1 camera, but returned to DxO as soon as support was provided.

About 18 months ago, I decided to give Lightroom another try. - Not that I was unhappy with Capture One. I just wanted to look at alternatives. I signed up for the Photography Plan for a year, but forgot to switch off the automatic renewal. I couldn't find a good enough reason for me to use Lightroom and Photoshop in preference to Capture One Pro and so I'll probably cancel the subscription when it is due for renewal early next year.

[Isac]

Wow you've used a few programs! I was a bit like you, I played with just about everything that was available and in 1992 settled on Photoshop. I've used it ever since then and probably won't change. I only have a couple of plugins now, some just for fun and Topaz DeNoise AI. I prefer the challenge of doing my own creative work with layers and masks, luminosity masks and I write many actions to speed things up. Pity you don't have PS, I have lots of freebies on my website. Great to have you here, every day is a school day.

[avkomp]

interesting angle for sure.
pureraw did a good job of cleaning up any noise too

[MJ224]

I find that despite DXO Pure Raw doing a super job, Topaz Denoise just improves denoising to the final image. But once on a screen this improvement is fairly marginal...

[griffljg]

Mark, are you suggesting doing both? I haven't tried that yet. Must have a play around with that.

[griffljg]

Here's trying out what Mark suggested. - Apply Topaz DeNoise AI to the final GIF file.

Noise? What noise?

[wigz]

Unusual angle with good colour and sharpness, and a good title for the post. There looks to be a bit of noise in the background, although not really noticeable at this size, but the bird itself is remarkably clean.

Just saw the image with Topaz DeNoise AI applied. It has certainly clearned up the remaining noise in the background.

[griffljg]

Thanks Alan. MJ224 suggested applying Topaz DeNoise AI to the final image. I did so and posted the image above. I can't see any residual noise and the bokeh appears to be really creamy. I think that a bit of further investigation is required.

Obviously, the image appears far better when viewed directly on my monitor at home than through the forum.

[David_MC]

Beautiful bird. Nice pose too.