Birds In Flight - Post Yours!

[Levina de Ruijter]

Great tit

 

[Darren75]

Great tit
View attachment 8857

He looks so cute! Great capture.

 

[Jack Dawe]

Buller's Shearwater, Kaikoura, NZ. I used Topaz Sharpen AI on this, which I find really aggressive and difficult to tame, but needs must: the original really was soft as butter. Not sure why. It should have been sharp at 1/1600, but rainy day, moving boat, moving bird (probably moving photographer too). I think it's passable though.

 

[RichardB]

I think it's passable though.

Looks good on my screen, Jason.

 

[Jack Dawe]

Looks good on my screen, Jason.

Thanks, Richard. After sharpening I had to re-soften some nasty white sharpening artefacts. It was a lot of work, but probably worth it.

 

[Levina de Ruijter]

I used Topaz Sharpen AI on this, which I find really aggressive and difficult to tame,

After sharpening I had to re-soften some nasty white sharpening artefacts.

I only use Topaz Denoise and it too sharpens so aggressively that I try to avoid using it. But I when I do use it I too clean up those sharpening halos. You would think that turning off sharpening altogether would actually turn it off, but it doesn't. Set sharpening to zero and it still sharpens.

That's why I switched to DXO Pure Raw. I apply it on the RAW file before I do anything else and I find it's wonderful. If I need to sharpen a little bit after editing and downsizing I will either do it myself the old fashioned way with an edge mask and Smart Sharpen. Or take it to LAB mode and do a High Pass on the lightness channel.

 

[Levina de Ruijter]

This is not a quality shot as the birds were too far away, but it shows how well the R5m2 performs and how much I can crop (this is about 2400px on the wide end, so a BIG crop).

 

[Levina de Ruijter]

Fly by from this afternoon: Cormorant.

 

[Jack Dawe]

I only use Topaz Denoise and it too sharpens so aggressively that I try to avoid using it. But I when I do use it I too clean up those sharpening halos. You would think that turning off sharpening altogether would actually turn it off, but it doesn't. Set sharpening to zero and it still sharpens.

That's why I switched to DXO Pure Raw. I apply it on the RAW file before I do anything else and I find it's wonderful. If I need to sharpen a little bit after editing and downsizing I will either do it myself the old fashioned way with an edge mask and Smart Sharpen. Or take it to LAB mode and do a High Pass on the lightness channel.

Thanks for that. I might look into DXO Pure Raw. I know what you mean about Topaz Denoise. Most of the time I find its sharpening OK and infinitely preferable to Topaz Sharpen, but maybe I'm not critical enough. When the standard setting overdoes it I use the low light setting, even if the shot is outside on a sunny day. That often works well.

 

[Levina de Ruijter]

Thanks for that. I might look into DXO Pure Raw. I know what you mean about Topaz Denoise. Most of the time I find its sharpening OK and infinitely preferable to Topaz Sharpen, but maybe I'm not critical enough. When the standard setting overdoes it I use the low light setting, even if the shot is outside on a sunny day. That often works well.

Yes, I do the same, I choose the Low Light setting most often as it seems to sharpen the least but what Low Light does is give very ugly edge artifacts, not unlike chromatic aberrations. But I clean those up later and then the end result is pretty decent.