Loons

[Ralph Wiggum]

I thought that I'd start a thread featuring our state bird. I snapped these while fishing in central MN last summer.

[hobbydog]

This one followed our drift all the way across the lake on last years opener.

[winona walleye]

awesome pics, loons are the coolest bird, im so fascinated with everything they do, i hope i get to see more from other people, good post ralph

[poutpro]

They are a very pretty bird when you cat look at all the detail that are on them.

[ATM]

great pictures, my wife just made hobbydogs our screen saver. Adam

[DTro]

I gotta get me one of those "hobbydog" cameras. Wow, your pics are stunning. Do you "dumb" em down at all for the internet?

[Quackaddict9]

Awesome pictures, Loons are fun to watch. Hobbydog- Wouldnt you mind if I could use your pic as a wallpaper? It would be a awesome one on my computer.

[hobbydog]

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Awesome pictures, Loons are fun to watch. Hobbydog- Wouldnt you mind if I could use your pic as a wallpaper? It would be a awesome one on my computer.

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No Problem

[hobbydog]

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I gotta get me one of those "hobbydog" cameras. Wow, your pics are stunning. Do you "dumb" em down at all for the internet?

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Not sure what you mean by dumb them down....it is more like trick them up. The loon is cropped a bit and a little extra USM or digital sharpening applied. If you are going to do digital photography it helps to know a little photoshop or I use Nikon View which alows similar tweaks that a darkrom would get you with film.

Actually Ralphs pics are pretty good and I bet if I had the raw jpeg from the camera I could make it a lot better....if you care to send it Ralph I would see what I could do.

[email protected]

[Ralph Wiggum]

I'll send you them later. Can you suggest a decent program or two for editing? I don't have much experience. I've got a Sony DSC-P72 3.2 megapixel camera.

[DTro]

sorry, what I meant by dumbing down was lowering the resolution?

I have heard that the raw tiff file is better. Do you lose any quality when converting them to jpg or jpeg?

[hobbydog]

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I'll send you them later. Can you suggest a decent program or two for editing? I don't have much experience. I've got a Sony DSC-P72 3.2 megapixel camera.

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I didn't spent about 1 minute on each picture.....the first one turned out a little better I think. The sun is low so the light (white balance) gives off a bit of yellow tint, which may or may not be desireable. That is where I get into trouble as I am not an artist. I tried to correct for the low sun a bit...maybe too much.

Or the uncropped version of the image to do an apples to apples comparison with the one above.

[hobbydog]

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sorry, what I meant by dumbing down was lowering the resolution?

I have heard that the raw tiff file is better. Do you lose any quality when converting them to jpg or jpeg?

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If you are going to print out an 8X10 maybe. What TIFF or RAW do is allow more options in post processing. Mi=y camera shoots a raw Nikon Format (NEF) that Pphotoshop or Nikons software will decode. With Nikon software you can adjust the white balance and exposure after the fact. The color space can be changed and there are more options that if you are an expert (I am not) give you an advantage. However once you are done editing and save in jpeg (using little or no compression) you would be hard pressed to tell the difference. I almost always shoot in jpeg, mainly because I can't tell the difference....at least on the PC. Maybe if I did 11X14 prints or if you get some real close in loons in the fog or at sunset, I'll switch over to RAW. I'm sure there are those that would disagree with that.

[jonny_redhorse]

ralph.i...i took one of your great loon pics and added some more blue to the water...not necessarily better...just different!...i chose not to enlarge it... the pic wasn't really that large to start with and it will only "blur" by enlarging it.....but a great pic!