M-M wrote:
> This uncommon bird was hanging out with his girlfriend in Cape Henlopen:
>
> http://www.mhmyers.com/d80/DSC_11533w.jpg
> ...
> OK, not sharp as a tack but it was windy, my tripod was fully extended
> and at that magnification, I grabbed what I could.
Beautiful shot. Photoshop is called for though: clone out the sensor
dust, sharpen with a larger radius like 1 pixel on a masked layer.
In article <7Txek.15308$uE5.6407@flpi144.ffdc.sbc.com>,
Paul Furman <paul-@-edgehill.net> wrote:
> M-M wrote:
> > This uncommon bird was hanging out with his girlfriend in Cape Henlopen:
> >
> > http://www.mhmyers.com/d80/DSC_11533w.jpg
> > ...
> > OK, not sharp as a tack but it was windy, my tripod was fully extended
> > and at that magnification, I grabbed what I could.
>
> Beautiful shot. Photoshop is called for though: clone out the sensor
> dust, sharpen with a larger radius like 1 pixel on a masked layer.
>
> Stacked teleconverters?
I did try some sharpening in Photoshop but discarded the attempt. I
wanted to post the untouched image in hopes of getting some ideas. An
unsharp mask with amount 20% and radius 30 pixels applied only to the
bird and branches looked a bit overdone.
What I really like about the image is first it contains every color of
the rainbow and second the really neat bokeh. The light yellow is the
shoreline and the deeper blue is the water.
I used a Nikon Fieldscope 82 with a D80, essentially a fixed aperture,
(f/13), manual focus 1000mm lens that can electronically meter the
exposure by adjusting the ISO and the shutter speed.
M-M wrote:
> In article <7Txek.15308$uE5.6407@flpi144.ffdc.sbc.com>,
> Paul Furman <paul-@-edgehill.net> wrote:
>
>> M-M wrote:
>>> This uncommon bird was hanging out with his girlfriend in Cape Henlopen:
>>>
>>> http://www.mhmyers.com/d80/DSC_11533w.jpg
>>> ...
>>> OK, not sharp as a tack but it was windy, my tripod was fully extended
>>> and at that magnification, I grabbed what I could.
>> Beautiful shot. Photoshop is called for though: clone out the sensor
>> dust, sharpen with a larger radius like 1 pixel on a masked layer.
>>
>> Stacked teleconverters?
>
> I did try some sharpening in Photoshop but discarded the attempt. I
> wanted to post the untouched image in hopes of getting some ideas. An
> unsharp mask with amount 20% and radius 30 pixels applied only to the
> bird and branches looked a bit overdone.
Try 1 pixel at 100%. Normally I use 0.3 pixels at 200%. Sharpening may
need to be masked out extra carefully at the edges of this one or it can
show gritty artifacts (maybe just the web jpeg). Not masking at all
emphasizes noise in the background.
> What I really like about the image is first it contains every color of
> the rainbow and second the really neat bokeh. The light yellow is the
> shoreline and the deeper blue is the water.
>
> I used a Nikon Fieldscope 82 with a D80, essentially a fixed aperture,
> (f/13), manual focus 1000mm lens that can electronically meter the
> exposure by adjusting the ISO and the shutter speed.
>
> Here it is:
>
> http://www.netaxs.com/~mhmyers/camera.html#FS
>
> The tripod head in the above photo is used for astrophotography. I use a
> different one for birding that allows smooth movement.
In article <ryyek.14243$xZ.7108@nlpi070.nbdc.sbc.com>,
Paul Furman <paul-@-edgehill.net> wrote:
> >>> http://www.mhmyers.com/d80/DSC_11533w.jpg
> >>> ...
> >>> OK, not sharp as a tack but it was windy, my tripod was fully extended
> >>> and at that magnification, I grabbed what I could.
> >> Beautiful shot. Photoshop is called for though: clone out the sensor
> >> dust, sharpen with a larger radius like 1 pixel on a masked layer.
> >>
> >> Stacked teleconverters?
> >
> > I did try some sharpening in Photoshop but discarded the attempt. I
> > wanted to post the untouched image in hopes of getting some ideas. An
> > unsharp mask with amount 20% and radius 30 pixels applied only to the
> > bird and branches looked a bit overdone.
>
> Try 1 pixel at 100%. Normally I use 0.3 pixels at 200%. Sharpening may
> need to be masked out extra carefully at the edges of this one or it can
> show gritty artifacts (maybe just the web jpeg). Not masking at all
> emphasizes noise in the background.
1 px @ 100% on the full res image works well, thanks for the tip.
I used the magic wand to select the background, then inverse selected,
then feathered the selection and applied the unsharp mask to the
selection.
I replaced the original image so the original link will now show the new
image.
--
m-m
M-M wrote:
> In article <ryyek.14243$xZ.7108@nlpi070.nbdc.sbc.com>,
> Paul Furman <paul-@-edgehill.net> wrote:
>
>>>>> http://www.mhmyers.com/d80/DSC_11533w.jpg
>>>>> ...
>>>>> OK, not sharp as a tack but it was windy, my tripod was fully extended
>>>>> and at that magnification, I grabbed what I could.
>>>>
>>>> Beautiful shot. Photoshop is called for though: clone out the sensor
>>>> dust, sharpen with a larger radius like 1 pixel on a masked layer.
>>>>
>>> I did try some sharpening in Photoshop but discarded the attempt. I
>>> wanted to post the untouched image in hopes of getting some ideas. An
>>> unsharp mask with amount 20% and radius 30 pixels applied only to the
>>> bird and branches looked a bit overdone.
>>
>> Try 1 pixel at 100%. Normally I use 0.3 pixels at 200%. Sharpening may
>> need to be masked out extra carefully at the edges of this one or it can
>> show gritty artifacts (maybe just the web jpeg). Not masking at all
>> emphasizes noise in the background.
>
> 1 px @ 100% on the full res image works well, thanks for the tip.
>
> I used the magic wand to select the background, then inverse selected,
> then feathered the selection and applied the unsharp mask to the
> selection.
>
> I replaced the original image so the original link will now show the new
> image.
Looks good, now use the clone stamp tool to remove the
dust-on-the-sensor blobs in the background (hold control to set the
source for rubber stamping). For web, reduce to 1024x640 & maybe even
sharpen again with 0.3 pixels at 200% or less%. For print there's no
reason to throw away pixels, just for web.
Paul Furman <pa...@-edgehill.net> wrote:
> M-M wrote:
> > In article <ryyek.14243$xZ.7...@nlpi070.nbdc.sbc.com>,
> > *Paul Furman <pa...@-edgehill.net> wrote:
>
> >>>>>http://www.mhmyers.com/d80/DSC_11533w.jpg
> >>>>> ...
> >>>>> OK, not sharp as a tack but it was windy, my
> >>>>> tripod was fully extended and at that magnification,
> >>>>> I grabbed what I could.
>
> >>>> Beautiful shot. Photoshop is called for though: clone out the sensor
> >>>> dust, sharpen with a larger radius like 1 pixel on a masked layer.
>
> >>> I did try some sharpening in Photoshop but discarded the attempt. I
> >>> wanted to post the untouched image in hopes of getting some ideas. An
> >>> unsharp mask with amount 20% and radius 30 pixels applied only to the
> >>> bird and branches looked a bit overdone.
>
> >> Try 1 pixel at 100%. Normally I use 0.3 pixels at 200%. Sharpening may
> >> need to be masked out extra carefully at the edges of this one or it
> >> can show gritty artifacts (maybe just the web jpeg). Not masking at
> >> all emphasizes noise in the background.
>
> > 1 px @ 100% on the full res image works well, thanks for the tip.
>
> > I used the magic wand to select the background, then inverse selected,
> > then feathered the selection and applied the unsharp mask to the
> > selection.
>
> > I replaced the original image so the original link will now show the new
> > image.
>
> Looks good, now use the clone stamp tool to remove the
> dust-on-the-sensor blobs in the background (hold control to set the
> source for rubber stamping). For web, reduce to 1024x640 & maybe even
> sharpen again with 0.3 pixels at 200% or less%. For print there's no
> reason to throw away pixels, just for web.
>
> It is a beautiful shot.
It is very much improved versus yesterday's untouched.
It also looks like i might be a very good example to use an
illustration of the post-processing of the techniques, "side by side",
so as to show the 'How To' with what each step does to improve the
final image.
In article
<47b75670-acaa-4790-a640-41156319e351@l64g2000hse.googlegroups.com>,
-hh <recscuba_google@huntzinger.com> wrote:
> It also looks like i might be a very good example to use an
> illustration of the post-processing of the techniques, "side by side",
> so as to show the 'How To' with what each step does to improve the
> final image.
This is with your spotting scope, right? Did you try iso1600 or even
pushing it if the D80 supports it? Shutter speed is quite low for such
magnification and the results shows what I might suspect first to be
unsharpness due to motion blur.
As to sharpening you might just sharpen the luminance channel. You might
consider using even the free version of Neat Image to deal with noise and
use it's sharpening of the luminance channel as a start as well. I tend to
mildly do this and the apply some sharpening as my final step in PS as
well. Also, PSCS has a bicubic sharper resizing algorithm that helps when
shrinking such images as well. I don't remember if earlier versions have
this.
Blue Grosbeak @ 1500mm 
Linear Mode
