One from the Farne Islands

From the Inner Farne to be exact.

[IMG]http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j311/Tinywales/Northumberland/shags_head.jpg[/IMG]

More or less straight out of the camera, a bit of cleaning thats all.

John Riley was correct when he said that a 55-300 would be enough for close ups of the birds.

C&C welcome, so that I can tell my good lady that we need to go back next year.

Thanks.

Howard

PS Can somebody point me to an explanation of smilies.

Nice shot bot you NEED a full bird shot. (Excuse for return visit given:lol

Well that's just one bird, there are thousands on the Farne's so you will have to go back to get the full set Nice shot BTW.

Like this -

[IMG]http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j311/Tinywales/Northumberland/shag_and_chicks.jpg[/IMG]

or this -

[IMG]http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j311/Tinywales/Northumberland/puffin_1_crop.jpg[/IMG]

or even this -

[IMG]http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j311/Tinywales/Northumberland/arctic_tern_and_chick_2.jpg[/IMG]

Thanks. As you say there are thousands could be a lifetime's work photographing them all.

Howard

That's the sort, you need to go back and check the chick grew up OK.

Did that include any sharpening? I expect I'm wrong but it doesn't look as sharp as I would expect your shots to be. Do you shoot RAW or JPEG? I'm always interested to know how people reach the final image as it helps me learn, and there is so much to learn.

Mike

Shot using JPEG, I'm not confident in my pp skills to use RAW. You're probably right that it does need a bit of sharpening - but how much? Feel free to play with it if you so wish. As you say there is SO much to learn. I wonder sometime if I'm too old to learn. I actually tried a bit of sharpening, using Unsharp Mask at about 120, with the puffin image, it does actually look better than the original.

Hope that helps in a little way.

Howard

I just love that last one, makes me think of a grumpy mum and a bolshie schoolkid.

Howard - shoot raw then you get another bite at the sharpening cherry when you import the file or try SilkyPix which offers some very easy and high quality sharpening.

You can't be much older than me - no-one seems to be these days - and I came to terms with it and haven't looked back. I started with SilkyPix which does offer a straightforward set of manipulation tools, I think you'd be very pleased with the difference it would make. There's a free trial download of the latest version which is well worth looking at.

My simple argument is that my PC has loads more processing power than the chip in the camera so let the PC do the processing and let the camera record the image.

Mike

I keep thinking that I ought to try shooting RAW, but as I said before it's getting up the courage to do so. Do you actually shoot in RAW alone or JPEG+RAW, the latter takes up a lot of card space. Never was any of these doubts with film.

As for age, Mike, I'm fast approaching my "three score years and ten".

Thanks for the advice.

Yes the mother does look as if it's saying "It's not with me".

If you are into bird photography the Farne Islands are definitely a place to go.


Howard

I just shoot RAW. SilkyPix will in my expereince always produce a decent JPEG even if you just use some pretty basic settings but then you can tweak them as well. You get a proof view of all the RAW files and then you choose the best of the bunch to spend time tweaking. That said Silky doesn't do cropping so you'd create a TIFF file from Silky which really is easy and then edit in some other program.

I'm sure that you'd be very pleased very quickly. There's a thread on the new Silky at the moment in the forum.

That said I suspect investing in Photoshop Elements at 70 quid would be a good move. You've spent a load on the camera and glass get a better return on that investment!

Mike