It's been a while (sing along)

[Tom Wilson]

Mike,

I got a mail demon that said my mail didn't make it to you. I did a little work to your pic here. I couldn't get rid of the artifacting with this one because it's embedded in the jpeg, but you've got a fantastic photo here. you might consider some changes like these to bring it out a little better than the original posting. Keep up the great work man.

Tom W

[Steve Foss]

Good pp Tom. What I'dve looked for, exactly. Brought out the detail in the dark head, which was a dead head in the original. No offense Buzz.

Buzz, send it along if you like. Be interesting to see how it looks in its original form.

As an interesting side note, I shot lots and lots of loons with Velvia 50 and Kodachrome 64, right alongside my digital stuff. When I got the slides back, the Kodachrome was warmer and the Fuji cooler, as one would expect, but none of them from either brand slide film showed any green in the head or neck. The digital showed greens. And we're talking exactly the same light, because I put down my film camera and picked up the digital.

[buzzsaw]

Here's another of a Tree Swallow.

[Steve Foss]

Buzz, the composition is excellent. And I mean excellent. But the saturation is over the top. If you knock that big S down a bit you'll have it. Unless it's the tone of my monitor. You never know, and my monitor is calibrated for making prints of my images, not necessarily for displaying others'.

[buzzsaw]

Steve, If the saturation settings were on a scale of 1 to 10, I slid the bar one notch. I have been very careful not to oversaturate my pictures as that was the thing I used to do to much of. So if it is oversaturated (opinions gang) then I really can't use that option on P shop elements.

[Steve Foss]

Buzz, you might check your contrast/saturation settings on your camera. Especially if you shot it jpeg, your in-camera settings for saturation/contrast may be too high. I typically set them toward the center or lower end of the scale, but I don't know what the D200 has for adjustable settings in that category. Now, as I said, this could be a monitor thing, too. If the bird is in bright sun, that could explain the saturation. But it really looks like you hit it with a flash (fairly flat and somewhat harsh, even light), and that could be the culprit, too.

[buzzsaw]

I think I figured it out and you nailed it, my settings were +1 on my camera for saturation, I just set it back to zero. Also, the light was not too good, so as always I used the flash fill to try and help with shadows.

Okay, moving forward... here is another from a few weeks ago in Florida taken with the D50.

[Steve Foss]

Ah, thought so. Flash can look harsh and flat. Check the manual to see how to set the camera and flash so it only gives a little bump to fill shadow instead of a big beam.

Your gull is a very nice composition, but the greens/rusts in the background look just a bit too saturated, and the shadows on the gull's back are very blue. While shadows on whites do tend to contain more blues than sunlight or flat-light whites, it's a bit too much. It may seem like I'm being picky, but I'm not trying to be. If the color is too sharp for real life, that's a bad thing. And remember, my friend, this is ALL JUST IMO! Someone else may see something 180 degrees from the way I see it, and that's no problem, either.

Is your D50 set +1 with saturation like your D200? And are you shooting RAW or jpeg? RAW does very little in-camera processing, which means, of course, you have more post-processing to do, but also means the color tends to be more natural or with slightly less saturation than natural.

I looked at the loon you sent me, but there's nothing I can do with it that Tom hasn't already done.

Questions: When you shoot jpeg, which it looks like the loon is, are you setting the camera to its largest jpeg setting with the least compression? If not, do. The more a jpeg is compressed in-camera, the lower the quality ultimately will be. Also, when you e-mail it to me, if you compress it to do that, when I open it up it'll be a lower quality image.

Compression is aggression and regression, when it comes to subtlety and color.

[buzzsaw]

I had that set at even on the saturation, I did shoot that pic using Aperuture Priority for depth of field.

It's Okay, I started this "hobby" back in December (4 months ago) and feel preety good about being held to higher standards if you will in such a short time. I'll keep you up all night giving you pics to CC. I guess I can atleast go to bed knowing my composition is apparently good and that saturation is just a setting that can easilly be changed.

[Steve Foss]

This one looks just right to me. I'm going to bed.

[buzzsaw]

You just said that because your tired! here are some more "White" birds, I've gotta have some color/decent background with these birds or else they seem to blah to me.

Look, I landed a whale!

[buzzsaw]

And finally two more and thats all I have time for now. A taste of Lake Minnetonka... not taken from the love boat!

[MarchelRipley1]

I enjoy your pictures, keep up the good work.