Stork

[Atul Sinai]

Hi guys,

Need ID of this bird. Got it along the coast of river Mandovi, Goa.

Was quite far, wasn't possible to get any closer. This was shot when using a tripod. Biggest mistake was to shoot at ISO 100, was way too concerned about the noise in the first week of my DSLR. I guess it is out of focus also.

Canon 600D. 55-250mm
Aperture Priority
Evaluative meteting
Shutter Speed 1/80
Aperture 13
ISO 100
Focal Length 250mm
Cropped by 37%

Regards,
Atul

[Mrudul Godbole]

It is a Heron. Mostly found near ponds and lakes. I agree you could have used a higher ISO. You can safely increase the ISO till 400 without getting much noise. Also you could have used a slight wider aperture like f7.1 instead of f13. Some more space all around would be good. Thanks for sharing.

[Abhishek Jamalabad]

Purple Heron Ardea purpurea. I would have preferred the bird placed a little lower in the frame. Since it is a crop, I suppose you can correct that. The colours of the bank appear similar to the that of the bird's head. Having an all-water BG if possible would have made the bird stand out better. You can post larger images (1024 pixels on the longer side, or upto 300kb) so that we can provide a more detailed critique. It won't be easy to get birds with a 250mm lens, so you might want to upgrade to a longer one if you're more into bird photography.
TFS, look forward to more.

[Atul Sinai]

Thanks Mrudul and Abhishek.

Yeah will soon be getting 400mm f/5.6 lens. Currently saving for that. It wasn't possible to get all water background as it was a small swamp area. The heron was looking for some fish. Had to reduce it to 640 larger side as the size was more than 300kb for bigger images.

[Saktipada Panigrahi]

I agree with Abhishek that it is a Purple Heron (Ardea purpurea),usually a solitary bird,difficult to distinguish from Grey Heron(Ardea cinerea),its larger cousin as colour of plummage/beak of Herons and Egrets changes during breeding season.Thanks for sharing. SaktiWild

[Mrudul Godbole]

Had to reduce it to 640 larger side as the size was more than 300kb for bigger images.

Atul, which software are you using for processing your images? I find Lightroom very good. In that you can specify the file limit with the pixels size (1024 at the longest edge) and the software automatically converts accordingly.

[Bhargava Srivari]

Agree about the ID and comments.

I see that there is loss of details, possibly because of the resize after processing. It is always better to resize images first, to say (these are figures that I usually use but it may vary depending on crop) 800*533 or so for horizontal images and 580*870 or so for vertical pics. The processing has to be done later, and sharpening comes last:)

[Atul Sinai]

Thanks guys.

I use photoshop for post processing, still in learning stages. Even I felt that there were loss of details when I resized it.

Regards,
Atul

[Sabyasachi Patra]

It is always nice to watch these purple heron. You can also find these birds in swamps and also in paddy fields. I agree with Abhishek that if the head was against water the difference in colour would have helped. However, I am not sure if he could have moved without disturbing the bird. Nevertheless, it is important to keep this in mind, so that in future while stalking one can decide on the approach.

I always convert directly from the RAW file. So processing and resizing happens at one go. If you are trying to convert or save the jpeg images again and again then the quality decreases.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Atul Sinai]

Thanks Sabyasachi. The raw files of my camera are not compatible with photoshop cs5. So i have to convert them into jpeg and then do the post-processing.

Regards,
Atul

[Dr. Kalpamoi Kakati]

Thanks Sabyasachi. The raw files of my camera are not compatible with photoshop cs5. So i have to convert them into jpeg and then do the post-processing.

Regards,
Atul

You can try updating your CS5,if you are having a licensed copy.It might solve your compatibility issue.Not sure though :)

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Atul,
Convert your images into TIFF files and then work on those.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Bhargava Srivari]

Atul

I myself use CS5 for editing. It can open RAW files if you download the adobe raw plug-in, which comes free.

[Atul Sinai]

Thanks Sabyasachi and Bhargava, will try out the options.

Regards,
Atul