These are beautiful captures, Conrad, and you did a great job capturing these IF shots. The Osprey against that sky is very pleasing. What Dan is talking about, and I can see on my monitor, is called Posterization and it appears as steps in what should be a smooth transition. Clouds and Skies are often subject to this "banding" It also shows in the last image. You should start shooting RAW Conrad. . I also like 4, 8 and 9. Congrats on a super set!
Socrate
Shasoc wrote:
These are beautiful captures, Conrad, and you did a great job capturing these IF shots. The Osprey against that sky is very pleasing. What Dan is talking about, and I can see on my monitor, is called Posterization and it appears as steps in what should be a smooth transition. Clouds and Skies are often subject to this "banding" It also shows in the last image. You should start shooting RAW Conrad. . I also like 4, 8 and 9. Congrats on a super set!
Socrate
Darn it Socrate, I was hoping no one would notice I'm a JPG shooter! Haha!!! And yes you are absolutely right, I should shoot RAW (Noelle repeatedly lectures me about it) Anyway, thank you for the kind words and the sage advice. Let me go change my settings now....
Shasoc wrote:
These are beautiful captures, Conrad, and you did a great job capturing these IF shots. The Osprey against that sky is very pleasing. What Dan is talking about, and I can see on my monitor, is called Posterization and it appears as steps in what should be a smooth transition. Clouds and Skies are often subject to this "banding" It also shows in the last image. You should start shooting RAW Conrad. . I also like 4, 8 and 9. Congrats on a super set!
Socrate
I tried shooting some in RAW just now and it is still exhibiting posterization Socrate. Maybe its something in my camera settings. I'll keep experimenting and see if it goes away.
Hehe... Since I tend to only shoot JPG, and since she keeps insisting I shoot RAW, I asked her to help me out when it comes time to process. But she has CS2 which doesn't allow her to open the Canon 50D RAW files I send her. I'm relatively new to all of this so I don't really know how to help her other than recommend she get CS4 which works just fine for me. Its just whenever I try to process a RAW file, it makes my birds, especially white ones, look like plastic! Maybe I need more practice fiddling around with RAW files.
Conrad Tan wrote:
Hehe... Since I tend to only shoot JPG, and since she keeps insisting I shoot RAW, I asked her to help me out when it comes time to process. But she has CS2 which doesn't allow her to open the Canon 50D RAW files I send her. I'm relatively new to all of this so I don't really know how to help her other than recommend she get CS4 which works just fine for me. Its just whenever I try to process a RAW file, it makes my birds, especially white ones, look like plastic! Maybe I need more practice fiddling around with RAW files. ...Show more →
Use DPP it works pretty good, and its comes free on the disc.
And SHOOT RAW, way more data and much smoother transitional vignettes/gradations when you convert to tiff from raw. (period)
The first one splendid, great angle against a great sky, love it. 
. I also like 4, 8 and 9. Congrats on a super set!
And yes you are absolutely right, I should shoot RAW (Noelle repeatedly lectures me about it) Anyway, thank you for the kind words and the sage advice. Let me go change my settings now.... 
I'll keep experimenting and see if it goes away.