Not seen one of these in our garden before. This is our third winter here and I get excited when I see a bird I've not seen before. This one has striking blue eyes and a search has led me to believe that's what it might be but wanted confirmation. I took these through our kitchen window so had to crop and lighten them as the day is dull and wet today. I did go outside in the hope of getting closer but as soon as I got around the corner of the house it took off.
I was at Dunbogan, NSW on saturday morning trying to get pics, somewhat unsuccessfuly, of Satin Bowerbirds feeding in a large fig tree.
this looks like an adult female, the blue eye is the indicator
the lovely body scallops are not apparent but you have said that it ws dull and wet
Peter
Yes, very dull and wet. I thought at first I was seeing a kookaburra on our lawn, which isn't unusual and it was almost the same size but there was something that wasn't quite right - it had been raining and light was poor. I watched it for awhile as it almost had its back to me but as it turned around I realised it didn't have the beak of a kookaburra so ran and grabbed my camera and long lens to get a closer look. That's when I realised it was a bird I'd not seen before. The blue eye amazed me as I couldn't see that without the camera.
Kathiemt
Selby, Victoria
Young male I think. Both sexes have blue eyes and this one looks like it is developing the satin colour.
Cheers, Owen.
Immature birds I believe have green in the breast area. Hard to tell as the white balance of your image is very way out.
Yes, as mentioned, I had very bad light - I tried to lighten it as best I could but I've never learnt PS.
Kathiemt
Selby, Victoria
Do you take RAW images? IF so, you can easily adjust white balance during conversion regardless of light quality.
If you don't, I would suggest you shoot RAW (and jpeg if you so please).
RAW gives you far more adjustability in case you get it wrong, which you should try to avoid. Again, light quality is not an issue.
The best thing you could do is to get into Photoshop as it's the ultimate imaging tool. You don't need that for WB adjustment though. With getting into Photoshop I don't mean learn everything, but there are some very good basic skills you can master and improve your images 100-fold. (not saying they're bad, just that it's a great tool to have!)
Thanks. No, I don't generally. I could but I find they just eat up too much space and most of what I take in jpg is fine. I had a chat with a friend who does portraits professionally and he never shoots in RAW, but then I guess, also, he's never taking shots on the fly or in poor light
. I do it now and then if I think it's going to be really important but,as I said, I've never learnt how to use PS and can only do a few things with it so might consider doing a course one day... when I've not got much else to do. But thanks for the suggestion.
Oh, and I meant PhotoShop when I said PS and yes, I do have it. CS3. Might upgrade one day...
Kathiemt
Selby, Victoria
Hi Kathy
Jpegs are fine if you set the white balance properly for the lighting used. I have a friend who is one of the more esteemed (and expensive) wedding and portrait photographers in Sydney (I guess around 10k a wedding is bloody expensive) and he only shoots jpegs when at work. When it comes to birds and nature photography it's the opposite. He does not touch jpegs. The lighting is far less controlled in many situations and it's far harder to tweak a poorly exposed image in jpeg format than RAW. If that shot of a one in a million comes along then one would want a little "insurance" and the ability to recover if grossly poorly exposed images result, which should be avoided in the first instance. Although it's still the case where to get the best out of a RAW file, images have to be exposed correctly (in the digital sense, not just by looking at the LCD to judge visually at an image). Looking at the histogram and how the pixels are recorded are so important to get the single best image quality that can be later tweaked a little in Photoshop (see my link to a blog post at the end).
Don't be shy of Photoshop, it's not all that hard. I only learned some things from online tutorials or from The Art of Bird Photography II on CD only and those things are more than enough to optimize my RAW files.
I guess at the end of the day it all depends on what each person wants out of an image. I sell quite a few of mine to different publishers including books, calendars, cards etc and they are pretty fussy about the image quality they get. Even though most times I submit large, fine jpegs, occasionally huge TIFF files, but they were all generated via using Photoshop from RAW images. Also having a later version of everything, including Photoshop, is a nice thing, but at the end the photographer using the camera and software are far more important than having the latest of everything. Heck, my poor old camera is nearly a seven year old model and has ONLY 8.2 megapixels yet it can produce superb images (sometimes). Thank God I don't listen to marketing hype!
I have some simple tutorials on my website about some techniques, if you are interested to learn a little - FOR FREE!
http://amatteroflight.com/tutorials.html
Tutorial 3 is a basic, basic guide to get the BEST quality images out of your camera. Although you need to shoot RAW to allow large deviations in exposure. I believe jpegs are no good beyond maybe 1/2 stop over or under. Sometimes I need to overexpose by 3 stops to maximize signal to noise ratio to get the best image quality then bring it back during post. I guess I want to make sure my buyers get what they pay for.
And here is a recent blog entry about minimizing digital noise.
http://www.amatteroflight.com/wordpress/?p=417