Saturday 8 June 2013

It's Been a RAW Day

In more ways than one. Woke up and got out of bed about 5 a.m. to wall to wall sunshine which was promising for a good day. By the time we went walkabout soon after 7 a.m. thick cloud was rolling in from the North Sea and temperatures struggled to reach 12C. It ended up as a morning to try shooting in RAW for the first time, but looking through the kitchen window. Shooting through two layers of glass does nothing to help gain sharp photos but at least RAW files seemed to have better colour definition: (all cropped and processed in Photoshop Elements 10)

Female  Chaffinch
 IMG_5826 copy


Uh oh, I think I'd better move:
 IMG_5807 copy

 Greenfinches:
 IMG_5821 copy

Male Blackbird with a full beak:
 IMG_5832copy

Blackbird - juvenile
IMG_5830 copy

Another experiment - video shot in 640x480 with the 50D and then digitally zoomed in AVS Video Editor software:



Hope you are having better wildlife watching weather than we have here.

7 comments:

  1. These look fine.
    RAW is a pain but it's amazing what can be rescued in it. The RAW converter in Elements is fine but if you want to try some really difficult recoveries try shooting one stop under or more to avoid blow out. Then get the trial version of Capture One. Lightroom or CS6. The latter are the same and the former is totally different but equally efficient at pulling midtone and shadow detail. They all have a sort of exposure brush tool to paint over the under exposed bits.

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    1. Reasonable Adrian - the final photo I like. I'll give those pgms a looking at some time.

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    2. John, anything is good enough for the Web. No it isn't process at 16bit or higher if you can. It makes a difference when you compress.
      I couldn't justify the cost of several hundred pounds. So used Elements since Elements 4. I now have E eleven and CS6. I only upgraded from 9....missed ten. So I can heducate some of my viewers. I should have bought full Photoshop years ago. I just didn't think I could use it......I was right! I'll have another go when it's raining. You get them for sixty days. Take sixty years to work the beggars out.

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  2. the video didn't load for me, but you did well with the photos.

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    1. That's a shame TWG. It's working in Firefox on the PC and laptop and in Safari on the iPad so maybe you hit a glitch on YouTube.

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  3. I know nothing about RAW John (the pictures are lovely!) but it's a decidedly raw day here in South Africa - freezing temps of 12〫 C(about 53°F), but the birds seem to be fine with it! They're all at the feeders and fruit trays, making up for fewer insects.

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    1. Hello Maree - RAW is a sort of uncompressed picture so the detail doesn't get lost but they are much larger files.

      These raw conditions are at just the wrong time with so many babies about needing lots of food. Does have the advantage of bringing many into the garden for photographing though.

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Thank you for visiting. Hope you enjoyed the pictures. Any comment, or correction to any information or identification I get wrong, is most welcome. John

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