Red Squirrel at Formby

[bulb763]

Shot these the other week

They're great practice

Thanks for looking

 

[IanC_UK]

great shots Jonathan, a little soft though ? which lens was this with ? its possible they may just need a minor tweak in Potatoshop or PSP a little on the bright side too the 2nd one, again should be an easy tweak in PS or PSP

 

[whiteflyer]

On all Ian has said.

 

[IanC_UK]

You have the edit ok ticked so heres a couple of tweaks, new levels layer, adjusted levels until it looked ok, then ran USM on the lightness layer a couple of times.

 

[oldgit]

Cute little fella(ette?).
.. nice turn on the processing IC

 

[bulb763]

Thanks Ian. Shows what can be done. I'd already done some processing in the form of subtle curves and levels, and a touch of USM. With USM I'm always wary of taking it too far, and perhaps I air too much on the side of caution with it... Would you mind telling me what steps you've taken with the shots

Oh and they were with my new Sigma 70-200 & 1.4TC, both at full stretch (according to the EXIF). Since you mention it, in your opinion does the softness appear to be camera shake, or do I have a soft copy of this lens (1/640 and 1/500 respectively if that helps)? I still have my doubts about the lens tbh...

 

[moomike]

The 1st shot after IanC's edit is excellent, really like the overall look of the image & the dark background blending with the subject.

As to whether or not it's camera shake, you'd need to do some more tests as the top end of 200mm with the 1.4x convertor is pushing near 300mm - camera shake at those speeds that you used shouldn't be too evident if you have good lens technique.

 

[mobilevirgin]

I like the 2nd one. There's a little smudge on the left of his mouth I'd have cloned out. They are a little soft, but the focus on the eyes is fine.

 

[IanC_UK]

Thanks Ian. Shows what can be done. I'd already done some processing in the form of subtle curves and levels, and a touch of USM. With USM I'm always wary of taking it too far, and perhaps I air too much on the side of caution with it... Would you mind telling me what steps you've taken with the shots

Oh and they were with my new Sigma 70-200 & 1.4TC, both at full stretch (according to the EXIF). Since you mention it, in your opinion does the softness appear to be camera shake, or do I have a soft copy of this lens (1/640 and 1/500 respectively if that helps)? I still have my doubts about the lens tbh...

All i did was create a levels layer, and tweak the centre slider until it looked ok (very hit and miss and by eye ) then flatten the image, change to lab colour (Image> Mode> Lab Colour.
Click on the Channels tab in the layers palette, then select the lightness channel.) and apply usm with the settings of Amount : 100 Radius : 0.2 Threshold : 0 apply this up to 5 times then change back to RGB (Goto Image> Mode> RGB Colour.) Then crop or resize and all done

Basically some of the steps from Matt's excellent tutorial here http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=2480

 

[bulb763]

Basically some of the steps from Matt's excellent tutorial here http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=2480

Great I'll take a look at that later

 

[bulb763]

Right I've had a read of that tutorial and learnt how to apply selective layers adjustments, which is useful. I've also used the USM technique described there and came up with these

1

2

3

Really appreciate your comments and pointers for processing

 

[IanC_UK]

Jonathan, you really need to drop the brightness, once you have done that i think they will be about right especially number 1 of the new set !