Female Scarlet Robin

Hi all, a whole bird shot from me for my second post here. The lighting was not ideal for this shot, being full sun. Fortunately, the tonal range isn't too extreme (the males of this species are much worse). This shot also was close to blowing the red channel but a little better than my recent rainbow lorikeet shot in that area. All comments appreciated. My view is that this shot may be a little boring: a bird on a stick with nothing in the background although I do like the intense stare as she is keenly scanning the ground for her next snack.
Details as follows: Canon 80D with EF 100-400 (MkI) at 400mm handheld. Aperture priority exposure 1/400 sec, f8, ISO 1600. Processed in Canon DPP 4 (digital lens optimiser, crop, lighting adjustments, default NR) then exported 16 bit TIFF to Photoshop Elements with Neat Image NR plugin. Very light NR applied to bird and stronger NR to background. Lighten shadows on bird's eye. Some distracting blurs on the left of the frame cloned out. Sharpened after size reduction (bird only).

Beautiful bird Glenn. The background is great and you did a great job in post.
The only negative is the head angle.

I do have one question...you said it was full sun, but your ISO was at 1600?
I would expect that number to be a lot lower.

Doug

Hi Doug, thank you for your comments. Regarding your question on light levels and exposure needed, I could have dropped the ISO but I was partly experimenting as I hadn't had the 80D for that long and was seeing what I could get away with. I should have also mentioned I pulled this back half a stop in post-processing. This shot was taken in August last year and as I'm in the Southern Hemisphere, it was winter when the sun intensity is much weaker.

Regarding the head angle, I'm aware it would generally be considered a negative but that may in part be due to unfamiliarity with this species. The pose is very typical. These robins land on low perches and scout the ground intensely for insects, pouncing when they see one. That's what the bird is doing here and I wanted to capture its hunting behavior. If the bird had been turned away from me any more, I probably would have not bothered with the shot though.

Hi Glenn ,nice capture. Understand about the head angle . Great feather detail.Had no idea a robin species definitely a different bird than the one we have in the states. Looking forward for future posts.

Thank you Kevin. We have around a dozen robin species, many of them brightly coloured - red or yellow typically - like the scarlet robin. Many of them (maybe all of them?) hunt in much the same way. They are good subjects for photography because they sit still on their perches while looking out for the next meal - unlike many smaller birds which are often constantly on the move.

Glenn, nice bird, BG and details. To bad about the head angle would also like to see it higher in the frame.

-Tim

Hi Tim, thank you again - is this what you were suggesting?

Glenn Pure said:

View attachment 170542

Hi Tim, thank you again - is this what you were suggesting?

Click to expand...

Yes, much better IMO.

Glenn....very nice work again! I wonder if you could lighten up that eye just a tad more. You might try duplicating the layer and applying a screen blend mode. Everything will get very light but then you could apply a black mask and paint in the just the eye. Finally adjust the opacity. I often use this technique to lighten eyes just a bit.

Bob, thanks for your comments and suggestions. I can lighten the eye more than I already have quite easily with a selection and finely feathered edge. Layer masks will also work but I avoid layers as much as possible as I have to down the file to 8 bits (at least in my old version of Photoshop Elements - has adobe improved here in new versions of PS/PSE?). I like to work with the file at 16 bits for as far as possible in the workflow. I think your change would make the image visually stronger but in this instance, I'm going to resist because the eye is in shadow and I personally haven't got to the point where I'd be comfortable with lightening it too far. I lightened it just enough to make the detail visible in the original capture a little more obvious but no more than that. I hope I'm not out of line here or being disrespectful?