White-Throated Kingfisher

[sjackal]

Image processed

View attachment 8869

The image is quiet grainy, that's for sure. I did the processing with DXO & was able to remove most of the noise. Adjusted the exposure, sharpening & micro contrast. Also tweaked the shadows & mid tones.

The fine details are not well defined. I have checked the image under magnification, the overall softness & loss of details is due to camera motion blur. NOthing much can be recovered from sharpening.

Thank you bro, can make brighter and bigger like my original? Color a bit different nevermind.

 

[Light Machinery]

Pic posted on Flickr & linked here. I cant post anymore larger pic as CS blocks it. Exposure increased.


D72_1131_DxO-4 by Hou Leong Chan, on Flickr

 

[Turbonetics]

LM PP has cleaned the noise but details has lost compare to the original posted.
The flash used has caused the "red" eye to the bird too.

 

[Turbonetics]

Pic posted on Flickr & linked here. I cant post anymore larger pic as CS blocks it. Exposure increased.


D72_1131_DxO-4 by Hou Leong Chan, on Flickr

Just saw this second post..It looks pretty well done.
much better than the original one posted.

 

[Mythmaker]

I just reached home and gave it a quick shot (about 20 minutes):

Some thoughts I have:
- There is no micro details, even in the raw file. There's doesn't seem to be any motion blur either... and since you had fired a flash, I'm 90% sure the TC is doing the damage here. Try shooting without the TC and crop the picture, the shot *might* be better.
- D7200's iso 3200 actually looks pretty good.

 

[sjackal]

I just reached home and gave it a quick shot (about 20 minutes):

Some thoughts I have:
- There is no micro details, even in the raw file. There's doesn't seem to be any motion blur either... and since you had fired a flash, I'm 90% sure the TC is doing the damage here. Try shooting without the TC and crop the picture, the shot *might* be better.
- D7200's iso 3200 actually looks pretty good.

Looks pretty good!

 

[Mythmaker]

Alot of people think that denoising is a one-time thing, "do it once and forget about it". It really is not. A couple of years ago, I developed my workflow on how to denoise during my days of shooting macro insect (or rather, attempting to shoot insect). Sharpness and keeping noise level low is extremely important in that particular genre.

The edit by me, was denoised no less than 5 times and sharpened no less than 5 times as well. That's already 10 layers dedicated to denoising and sharpening. There's also other ways to deal with noise level, such as giving it a blur. In the end, you have to know very clearly on which part of the photo needs a denoising, which part doesn't, and which part needs just a little. That's because you can't escape the reality, that every denoise losses more details. Unfortunately, people have a mindset that denoising is bad, and it should be applied as little as possible - it couldn't be further from the truth.

Denoising aggressively might not be a bad thing because stuff like background can afford to lose all the details; that will just result in making your subject stand out more. Hence an aggressive denoise applied to the background actually helps the photo. Details in the wrong area misled the eye, giving a chance for the viewer to read a different story than the one you wrote.

Ultimately, denoising is just alot of patience and practise.

 

[Light Machinery]

Good write up on the PP steps for denoising Mythmaker. :thumbsup:

 

[Turbonetics]

Alot of people think that denoising is a one-time thing, "do it once and forget about it". It really is not. A couple of years ago, I developed my workflow on how to denoise during my days of shooting macro insect (or rather, attempting to shoot insect). Sharpness and keeping noise level low is extremely important in that particular genre.

The edit by me, was denoised no less than 5 times and sharpened no less than 5 times as well. That's already 10 layers dedicated to denoising and sharpening. There's also other ways to deal with noise level, such as giving it a blur. In the end, you have to know very clearly on which part of the photo needs a denoising, which part doesn't, and which part needs just a little. That's because you can't escape the reality, that every denoise losses more details. Unfortunately, people have a mindset that denoising is bad, and it should be applied as little as possible - it couldn't be further from the truth.

Denoising aggressively might not be a bad thing because stuff like background can afford to lose all the details; that will just result in making your subject stand out more. Hence an aggressive denoise applied to the background actually helps the photo. Details in the wrong area misled the eye, giving a chance for the viewer to read a different story than the one you wrote.

Ultimately, denoising is just alot of patience and practise.

I have seen photos that are denoised very nicely that the background are so smooth but to me that may looks nice but not natural(which is the one u did above).
if u can access a photo in high quality u can roughly tell how good or bad the original photo is or if u don't mind cropping the above photo to just 50% for us to see the bird?
In fact I can see noise presence on the bird even without cropping but the background is so clean and smooth?
Nothing beats getting it right on the shootings IMO.

 

[Mythmaker]

I have seen photos that are denoised very nicely that the background are so smooth but to me that may looks nice but not natural(which is the one u did above).
if u can access a photo in high quality u can roughly tell how good or bad the original photo is or if u don't mind cropping the above photo to just 50% for us to see the bird?
In fact I can see noise presence on the bird even without cropping but the background is so clean and smooth?
Nothing beats getting it right on the shootings IMO.

It's impossible for me to crop to 50%, because it had already been resized. One of the key thing to denoising is knowing the final output size of the photo.

The background is smooth, but denoising can only take 30% of the credit. The other 70% goes to a background blur I applied, since I find the background too distracting.

I agree a much better job could had been done on the masking, unfortunately I try not to spend more than 20 minutes per photo since I have so many requests.

I can see you go for realism, unfortunately I'm the complete opposite. My PP always had a tendency to lean a tad towards surrealism, and I try to tell a story with each photograph - a story that occurred only in my mind. Unfortunately that can go against reality sometimes.

 

[jerryl]

I just reached home and gave it a quick shot (about 20 minutes):

Some thoughts I have:
- There is no micro details, even in the raw file. There's doesn't seem to be any motion blur either... and since you had fired a flash, I'm 90% sure the TC is doing the damage here. Try shooting without the TC and crop the picture, the shot *might* be better.
- D7200's iso 3200 actually looks pretty good.

Hi mythmaker, care to share what software you use...

 

[Mythmaker]

Hi mythmaker, care to share what software you use...

Hi, for pictures done for others I usually use only photoshop (because most people won't want to spend more for plugins haha). Opened the same image 5 times with various degree of denoising in ACR.