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Archive 2016 · OK tear this one up ...RTH flashed

  
 
MedicineMan404
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · OK tear this one up ...RTH flashed


C/C all you want I know it sucks but I'm still trying with flash photography.
This is Harry the neighborhood hawk coming in for dinner I left out for him.
Flashing with a 580EXii on the 1DXii and the new TamG2-

Flash photography 101.5 by MedicineMan4040, on Flickr



Oct 21, 2016 at 02:39 PM
mogul
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · OK tear this one up ...RTH flashed


Interesting experiment...I think it work better if you would turn down the flash quite a bit.


Oct 21, 2016 at 02:43 PM
eyelaser
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · OK tear this one up ...RTH flashed


The only way to get better at this stuff is just do it...I will leave it up to Morris to give you pointers as he is a master of flash photography in every situation. I applaud your efforts...I have failed miserably almost every time I've tried.
Eric



Oct 21, 2016 at 02:47 PM
Shasoc
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · OK tear this one up ...RTH flashed


I believe there is nothing wrong with the flash exposure. The bg shows some blown out spots, especially the one above the bird's head. The main problem with this shot is lack of sharp detail, especially feathers detail; they look "smeared" if you know what I mean. This happens to me when I apply too much NR, but I can't tell what is the problem here.
Socrate



Oct 21, 2016 at 03:10 PM
MedicineMan404
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · OK tear this one up ...RTH flashed


Thanks to all for comments.
Yep a loooooong way to go for flash know-how.
Sharpening was LR default. I did denoise the background in Imagenomic, but agree sadly
NO feather detail. I do like his pose but the flash marks in his eyes I don't like at all.



Oct 21, 2016 at 03:26 PM
AGeoJO
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · OK tear this one up ...RTH flashed


Hi Robert,
I like the target and composition a lot. A great image but since you were asking some C/C, well, here it goes.

I do think that the flash output was on the high side, for my taste by 1-stop or maybe even by 2-stop. This is a matter of taste and as such, it is subjective and it is strictly my opinion and I understand that your mileage or other people's mileage may vary. It seems to me that the hawk looked overexposed on the original RAW file and you decrease the total exposure using LR. So, the exposure on the hawk looks OK now but the background looks a tad underexposed. You can tone down the highlight in LR while keeping the rest roughly the same. But if you do too much of that, you can get some halo effect at the boundary of dark/light areas.

I firmly believe that flash should be used for fill-in and not the dominant light source for wildlife, at least most of the time. Of course, there will be situation that you want to use the flash power as the dominant/main light source but IMHO, it is not the case here.

I was out and about earlier and I used my iPad to easily enlarge the image and I did it back and forth. From what I could gather, it is possible that the camera/lens combo shows a little bit of a back focus issue, at least in this case. The beak of the hawk is definitely blurrier than the feathers, especially of the tail feathers. For all we know the actual focusing plane fell even behind the tail feather by a smidgen, rendering the hawk out of focus with the beak showing the most OOF area. What was or where was your focusing point, BTW?

I hope this helps and feel free to send me a PM if you want to discuss this further, like what we have been doing.

Take care,
Joshua



Oct 21, 2016 at 04:11 PM
rw11
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · OK tear this one up ...RTH flashed


move the bird up so it covers that highlight...


Oct 21, 2016 at 04:50 PM
MedicineMan404
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · OK tear this one up ...RTH flashed


Thanks again to all who commented.


Oct 21, 2016 at 06:41 PM
morris
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · OK tear this one up ...RTH flashed


Hi Robert,

Your flash exposure seem to match the background level and this part is correct. I agree with others that the bright spot directly behind your subject is a distraction yet it's something that happens and is OK. As I look at the hawk, the only place I see true sharpness is on the tail and that is hurting the image. I tried out the G2 model today at Photo Plus Expo and found it to be a very sharp lens. The VR worked well yet it was not as snappy as the competition when I stressed the focus system to go from about 7m to infinity. I did not test its ability to track though I'd be surprised it had an issue with this. I'm wondering focus was locked when you took this image. Was it part of a burst or sequence of squeezed off images? If yes where is the focus on the others? Do you know where focus was supposed to be? If this is not cropped and you were using the center focus point the face would be sharp which it is not.

I've dough in as you asked for C&C. It's a nice image and many would be thrilled to have take this.

Morris



Oct 21, 2016 at 06:43 PM
arbitrage
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · OK tear this one up ...RTH flashed


The flash exposure looks okay. The eyes look terrible because of the flash. The image isn't critically sharp anywhere. It looks like NR was applied everywhere. Possibly just missed focus overall or maybe this is a big crop?(although I know this hawk is pretty tame so I doubt it was).

Otherwise it is a nice shot, great wing display and straight on action.



Oct 21, 2016 at 07:01 PM
Karl Witt
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · OK tear this one up ...RTH flashed


OK, shot at 328mm so this was likely a frame filler from the start.

Exposure balanced from flash to match background and this causes the image to have less depth. No shadows so less contrast in the bird. For me the flash 'fill' is a bit overpowering but this is something that can be adjusted in PP but that still won't bring in shadows for contrast which will give more perception of sharpness.

I agree with Socrate that the entire image looks looks like it had NR applied, NR needs to be removed from subject to show details. I think there is equal detail in both wing edges and tail edges and very detailed talons. At 1 /1600 sec you likely froze any movement however perhaps the head made a quick turn or the focus is behind the head which could be the lens not keeping up with this close tracking speed needed. Any lens could miss this shot and it may depend on what focus point or points you had selected. Lots of variables.
The couple of hot spots in BG are very easily fixed in PP.

I do think by the looks that there is details masked away that can be brought out. Share your PP on this with us please

It is an awesome pose, I hope the details are there to bring out Robert

Karl



Oct 21, 2016 at 07:33 PM
MedicineMan404
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · OK tear this one up ...RTH flashed


Well in total you guys are awesome. So much for me to take in.
Morris it was def. part of a burst and when I played them back on camera I cold see the 'black' images where the flash was re-charging.
My intention was not the hawk that day; I was actually out trying to work the little birds landing on the branches in shadow-the hawk was happenstance though and flashing him was not my intention. If I could repeat the shot I would have the flash off.

Karl thank you so much. My PP is as simple as it can get. LR does the default NR, I ship the image to PScc and create a layer. Denoise the entire image. Create a mask and brush out the denoising to reveal the hawk below. On this image I did tinker with levels a bit.
I'm at the point (disgusted) with my sharpening (my utter complete lack) skills I don't even try other than the above mentioned LR default--my efforts seemingly always end in halos or worse and I'm at the point where I'm thinking to drag the LR sharpening slider to zero and keep it there!

Regardless still having fun with cameras



Oct 21, 2016 at 09:02 PM
Imagemaster
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p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · OK tear this one up ...RTH flashed


Never use flash for wildlife except when you can't get the shot with the available natural light. JMO


Oct 21, 2016 at 09:59 PM





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