Yellow footed green pigeon

[Dipankar Mazumdar]

Yellow footed green pigeon outside my window eating fruits from the Ficus infectoria (Pilkhan) Tree. awaiting C&C

EOS 50D + EF 300 F4 IS L at f/4 , 300mm, 1/125 , ISO 200

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Dipankar,
Good to see a shot from your new equipment.

I increased the exposure as the face was dark. There seems to be some subject movement. The leaves appear to be sharper than the face. I also opened up the shadows a bit. You can sharpen a bit more.

Also, I suggest that you open the image in Zoombrowser to check the actual point of focus.

Lot of folks here would envy you as you just need to open your window for birding. Look forward to more images.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Mrudul Godbole]

Congrats on the new equipment.Thats a nice photograph. The re-post by Sabyasachi looks good. Nice perch. It was posing for you to photograph.

Looking forward to more..

[Sagar Patil]

Congrates Dipankar for new equipment.
Claws are effective. Look at the color transition on the body of the bird.

I am the first to envy window birders :)

[Abhishek Jamalabad]

great shot. Repost looks even better. congrats on your new equipment.
Never expected anyone to see a green pigeon from their window. But i've had many encounters where I've seen amazing birds where i least expected them. For example, my first sighting of the great pied hornbill was while having lunch in the dining hall of the resort at Dandeli! The bird was barely ten feet away from the window, and at perfect eye level. Wish I had a camera then!!!

[Dipankar Mazumdar]

Dear Sabhyasachi da,
Amazing improvement that you have done to the picture, please handhold me thru the process you did. I did not understand the zoombrowser part, could you please elaborate. Thankyou in advance for your time and patience...!!!

Cheers
Dipankar

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Dipankar,
How do you process your shots? Photoshop? I use lightroom.

1. First imported your shot into lightroom.

2. In lightroom, when I saw the histogram, there was some blinking highlights ie. in some of the leaves there was overexposure and the whites were blown - for eg the leaf above the head of the green pigeon. There was some blacks in the body that had lost details.

3. The face of the pigeon was dark. So first I increased the exposure by pulling up the exposure slider.

4. There is a slider called fill light. It acts like fill flash and gives light to some of the dark areas. I use it very sparringly. Gave some fill light - I think 4 or 5 points.

5. There is a recovery slider, which when moved recovers the overexposed areas. I did that.

6. In the levels slider, I reduced the highlights, then increased the shadows. That helped in lightening up the eye nicely.

You can work on the raw file and do a much better job.

Zoom browser is a software that comes in the CD given by Canon along with your camera. Just install it. When you open your photo with zoom browser, there is a facility to check the focus point. At times you can learn where exactly you focussed. That helps in educating. Nothing else.

Just remember, that you can always acquire processing skills sooner or later. However, it is important to shoot in RAW as RAW is like a digital negative. You can always revisit your old shots taken in RAW mode and then process again.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[AB Apana]

Congrats on the new equipment, look forward to seeing more images.

Apana

[Dipankar Mazumdar]

Thankyou all for the congratulatory messages for the equipment, i hope I can translate the same to messages on Images...!!!!

@ sabhyasachi Da, I use Photoscape 3.3 that I downloaded from www.photoscape.org. I find it rather simple and straight forward to use.(I have limited techno abilities..:( ). Please let me know if it is a good choice.

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Dipankar,
I have no idea about photoscape. Let me have a look at it.

I always use lightroom as that is not only an image editing programme, but also a complete image management system. You can catalogue your files there. Bibhav got it free from some site. You can PM him.

You would have got the DPP (Digital Photo Professional) software of Canon in the CD that comes along with the camera. That is also a good software, though not as good in terms of interface as Lightroom, but it is a good software. You should try that.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi