| Joined: | Wed Apr 18th, 2012 |
| Location: | United Kingdom |
| Posts: | 4622 |
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Many thanks for those kind words, and I appreciate your work on the photo which is extremely helpful.Which program do you use?
I thought it was overexposed, but all I did in NX Studio was reduce the noise and I think I increased the sharpness slightly. I hadn't thought about the histogram, being obsessed with the focusing. I will address that in future.
I have thought of bait - so far I have only had two raptors in the garden - one was a sparrowhawk which broke its neck on the conservatory window, and a peregrine falcon which chased a bird into a shrub - unsuccessfully. It must have stood facing me for at least 30 secs, before it took off, but this was before the Nikon, and the Powershot was not to hand. I do remember a hawk of some sort flying at hedge height through the garden at very high speed - it had gone before I could blink!
I will try the bait - it will be would be interesting to see the result.
There's all sorts in my neck of the woods - apart from kites,kestrels,and sparrowhawks, the ravens, crows,jackdaws, would descend wholesale and clear up the bait before the kites got a sniff! Not to mention cats.....
I will have to sit and wait, and shoo off the unwanted visitors.
Your kite and blackbird is a beaut.
I am Mac based these days (although I still have a windows PC laptop). I use MacBook with a Photoshop monthly subscription for most of my editing but I also use an iPad for quick stuff (like your image) with a free programme called Affinity Photo.
In many ways it’s the equal of Photoshop for basic editing but the menus and commands take some getting use to…when you have been weaned and brought up on PHShp. It’s a bit like going to Sony camera menus after years using Nikons.
Yes your photo was about 0.8stop over exposed (according to Affinity) but that’s nothing for modern software to resolve.
What’s important is understanding why its overexposed…and checking if the camera has a recurring exposure issue.
You will recall your early posted photos were set at -0.7 exp compensation. If you didn’t reset the camera when you purchased it and didn’t make that adjustment yourself, it MIGHT be the previous owner found the camera overexposed and set the exp compensation rather than having it checked out?
But there’s also the more obvious reason…a lot of dominant backlit foliage around the kite. It maybe that simply the metering system adjusted exposure for the ”majority”. The classic scenario of light subject/dark background….where you need to tell it to concentrate more on the subject.
Yes you can make the adjustments in exposure compensation but the other option is to change metering mode from the normal Mattrix (that you are using) to maybe Centre weighted or even (given the size of the bird in the frame) Spot metering. This just tells the camera to stop considering and averaging everything in the frame and consider a central area or spot area only ….to better meter/expose the subject.
Appologies if I am running on about something you already know…it’s difficult to gauge/moderate advice remotely.
I can’t recall if NX has Levels (basic exposure adjuster) control? That’s all I effectively did with your Kite so it might have been possible in NX. It’s amazing how much sharper images will look by just getting the histogram right first!
I believe there are 4 golden rules (someone else will tell me if there’s more lol) to processing your captures.
1) Shoot in uncompressed Raw file format rather than JPEG. This way you capture everything as shot without the camera interfering in what is effectively in old money ….the “film development”
2) Adjust exposure first….Sharpening last (ie only sharpen once you have finished all your other refinements.
3) Save finished master files as uncompressed files NOT jpeg. By all means make a jpeg copy for distribution or display.
4) NEVER open a saved jpeg…work on it some more …and resave it as a jpeg again.
Each time you save as a jpeg, the algorithm “throws away” similar tones/colours to compress the file (even on best setting, some is lost). If you open up a jpeg thats already been “pruned”, when you resave it again the algorithm looks for more ”pruning”….and you gradually lose dynamic range. Just opening and resaving without even working on the file, will still systematically degrade an image!
Thx about my image….it wasn’t so beaut with a slice of pink luncheon meat drawing the eye.
Last edited on Sun Aug 31st, 2025 15:05 by
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Eric