My first and only Robin

This shot was taken a couple of weeks back and I forgotten about it. NO PP done to this at all (not even a crop, even it screams to be cropped).
Sadly it is not 100% as I had no DoF. I came around a corner and he was sitting right in front of me. I just had the time to take a pot luck shot and for this I find it did not come out too bad.
Sadly he was gone before I could take the second shot and I got only a 'vibrating' twig where he was in the second shot.
It could do with sharpening and a crop and also I do know how to do the crop I just seem to mess the sharpening up.
I just love the texture of the feathers which is so clearly visible in the 1:1 size but I seem to mess the RAW file up when sharpening and I rather keep it as is.
Maybe someone could tell me how to best tackle the sharpening problem?
As usual C&C's are welcome.



Robin near Studland Village by smutjeuk, on Flickr

Looks fine to me,i wouldnt sharpen unless necessary.
Excellent shot

Many thanks for the kind comment
If you look at this crop you will see that it has literately no DoF and it could do with a bit of sharpening unless I am totally mistaken



Robin near Studland Village (Crop) by smutjeuk, on Flickr

i still think it looks fine ,but you could do a very small amount of sharpening if you wanted perhaps around the head area.

Try sharpening in PS after exporting from RAW (and after resizing to print or web size). Use 'Unsharp Mask' as it gives you plenty of control and best results. It is a great shot and doesn't look soft (although that may be due to Flickr's in-built image processing).

You have cropped too much there IMO. I would keep the aspect ratio of the shot too.

Many thanks for that. I was not sure where to crop as to the left are too many twigs and to the right its blurred background and I was not sure where to place the Robin.
Will give the sharpening a go. Never knew that I should use a 'Unsharp Mask' (will have to hunt and find it now :lol.
Many thanks again.

This is my suggested crop, Smutje... positions the Robin slightly to the right. so he has space to look or fly into! I haven't been able to sharpen the shot but I have tweaked the levels slightly. link

If there's a problem with focus / dof, sharpening can only take you so far. Programs like FocusMagic can take you a little further.

It looks a pretty good shot to me. I would crop to keep the robin towards the right third but leave as much as possible of the background on the left.

It's the kind of shot that gets accepted in the PPG, so good luck.

Are you sure. I thought that the standards so much higher? Many thanks for the kind reply.

This look so much better then mine. I get the idea of the crop and will bear it in mind should I be lucky enough to have something similar again.
As for the DoF it is just clear visible in the 1:1 sot. The front feathers are sharp and clear but the head is already slightly out of focus. I could have done with an f8 or f11 on that one just to give me the extra one or two centimetres of depth.

Many thanks for all your kind replies and showing me where I can get better, I really appreciate it and it will help me in the future.