Lapwings

Spent this afternoon watching a pair of lapwings courting in the field next to our house.
Although far from being technically perfect, I'm pretty pleased with these images, being the first attempts at in-flight bird photography on my part.

K7, 55-300 (at 300), manual focus, overcast skies.


[IMG]http://i1021.photobucket.com/albums/af340/rogerhlane/Lapwings043crop.jpg[/IMG]


[IMG]http://i1021.photobucket.com/albums/af340/rogerhlane/Lapwings021crop.jpg[/IMG]



[IMG]http://i1021.photobucket.com/albums/af340/rogerhlane/Lapwings020cropadj.jpg[/IMG]


C&C welcome.


Coker.

I like these.

As you mentioned they are not perfect but the composition is good and you are out there giving it a go

Have you tried noise reduction software such as Neat Image (free version) that's not perfect either but it can be very effective

Regards


Stu

p.s if only perfect shots were allowed here I would have no posts

Thanks, Gareth. I thought so too!

Stuey, thanks for the tip. Duly downloaded & applied to No.2

Further thoughts?


[IMG]http://i1021.photobucket.com/albums/af340/rogerhlane/Lapwings021crop_filtered.jpg[/IMG]

Coker.

And No.3,


[IMG]http://i1021.photobucket.com/albums/af340/rogerhlane/Lapwings020cropadj_filtered.jpg[/IMG]


And No.1,


[IMG]http://i1021.photobucket.com/albums/af340/rogerhlane/Lapwings043crop_filtered.jpg[/IMG]

Coker.

I am glad to see that the Neat Image tip worked - the pictures are improved a little

Now I have to go and do something unhelpful just to restore the balance

How cropped are these Coker? The noise looks worse than you'd expect at ISO3200, if these were uncropped shots.

The images here are about 40% of the original frames, which were all shot at ISO800.

Coker.

Crumbs!

I don't tend to see colour noise like that with my K-7, and regularly shoot up to ISO1250. I'd advise setting the camera to NR>Low to avoid the coloured blotches in jpegs, or best of all, shoot RAW. Lightroom does a very pleasing job.

Sorry,Will. These wern't Jpegs straight from the camera, I'd PP'd them in PSE9. The originals were pretty gloomy straight from the camera.

(edit)
Just checked the exif again & the metering was set to "spot", so read off the snow, under-exposing the birds!

Coker.

Well done on capturing these images.

From personal experience I know how hard it is and my results have never been much good. The NR filter seems to work very well, so well I've just downloaded it myself. Nice tip Stuey.

Goodness Roger, what a difference that bit of software makes! I love peewits: they're supposed to be getting rarer due to changed farming practices.

I've just downloaded Neat Image, then took a couple of ISO 1600 shots in our dimly lit living room (actually not bad straight from the camera, considering it's a setting I'd never use). The software (at default settings) made a huge difference and, after a bit of levels and sharpening, produced a very clean image.

Thanks, Stuey! Now the K10 is, indeed, the perfect tool as I can get it to perform reasonably well in low light, if needed!

I do like this Forum...

Sorry for butting into your thread, Roger.

I think Neat Image is trememdous and just using the default settings can yield superb results, I regularly shot at ISO800 on the K10&20D for my bird photography, I could never understand how it could clean up noise from the background yet appear not to touch feather detail.

I've not used it as much with the K5 as I'm waiting for the K5 noise profile.

I have plugged the software quite often on here, perhaps we shpuld have sticky for links to interesting software.

EDIT: Ooops Sorry I should also have commented on the pics, not perfect but far better than most of my attempts at Lapwings.

It seems like at last I may have helped a few people, that makes me happy

I was introduced to Neat Image a few years ago by a computer dude who had helped with the Neat Image R&D, he was subcontracting in the same place I work.

I find it best not to have to use it but whenever there is a high ISO or underexposure then it does the trick with some loss of detail and sharpness but nothing is perfect I suppose.

Glad to pass this info on

Cheers


Stu

That's the beauty of threads on PU, Andrew!

Just follow where they go!

Roger.