SP reader John Philip has attempted to shoot a difficult subject. Though not perfect, I credit him for the effort.
John, here’s a suggestion:
Try this shot again but this time use white reflectors on either side of the lantern (Thermocol will do). You may need to vary the angle and the distance of the reflectors from the subject.
Secondly, use a tripod (I don’t think you have used one). This will ensure a very sharp picture.
But as it stands, how can the picture be improved? What would I have done if I were you?
The picture is underexposed. There are two possibilities:
 Edited Image |
Edited Image_1 |
1.You may have done that on purpose (to prevent the highlights from overexposing). If that is so, it
 Edited Image_2 |
is a wrong practice. In this case, I would have provided an exposure compensation of 1.5 to 2 stops.
2.You may have metered the subject and exposed as per the meter’s reading. May be you
forgot that a exposure meter will always render the metered area as a mid-tone!
In Photoshop, I made a copy of the background and applied a Blending mode using Screen. That lightened the overall image but I wasn’t satisfied. Hence I re-applied the Screen blending mode.
The image brightened but the top was still badly underexposed. Hence using Levels, I moved the middle slider way to the left till I could see some detail at the top. This action, as expected, over-brightened the lower area. Hence, after clicking the white Mask (just to make sure it was selected), I painted over the lower area of the picture using Brush (black as foreground color). This brought back the lost detail. Opening up details resulted in the increase of digital noise.
I also tried another composition. See which one you like better.
The Kingfisher
SP reader Swapan Sarkar has photographed this kingfisher and wants to know how it could be improved.
 Original Image |
 Edited Image |
Swapan, this is a good attempt. One way to improve is to keep taking such pictures and then check out the results against the available metadata. For example, the shutter speed for your shot is 1/50sec. Since you have shot the picture using a focal length of 170 mm (the metadata tells me that), the shutter speed for hand-held camera should have been about 1/270 sec or at least nearby (the reciprocal of the effective focal length, which, with your camera model, is 1.6 times the actual focal length). But it is possible that you were using a lens with image stabilization, which would give you about 2-3 stops advantage in shutter speed. My personal take on this issue is to assume that there is no image stabilization. Decide your shutter speed without considering the image stabilization system and let that help be a bonus! Do remember that due to the excitement of getting a good photo, our hands can also tremble a bit.
The next point is the aperture that you have opted for. Why f/9? While using this aperture is not wrong, you could have used the lens wide open at f/5.6 (I am assuming that you were using a 18-200mm zoom lens with a maximum aperture of f/5.6 at the telephoto end). Now you might say, and correctly so, that at the widest aperture the lens does not perform optimally and the corners are not as sharp. In this particular case, the wide open lens would have softened the background, thereby placing greater attention on the bird. Remember, using f/5.6 instead of f/9 would have given you about 1- 1/3 stop advantage in shutter speed, which would have rendered the image sharper.
The next option would have been to use a higher ISO sensitivity. But higher the sensitivity, greater the digital noise. To overcome this problem, perform the exposure in RAW and shoot to the right. This means that your exposure should be such that the histogram is more towards the right end but should not touch it. This will ensure that noise is kept to the minimum. Remember that this trick will work only with RAW files and of course, you need to know how to process the image in ACR.
I have done the following to improve your original photo:
1. There seemed to be some overall haziness in the picture. I applied Unsharp Mask in Photoshop using a Radius and Amount of 25. That’s right, 25! This reduced the haziness to some extent.
2. Then using Hue and Saturation, I adjusted the green and red on the kingfisher.
3. Applied global Sharpening using USM. But this sharpens the noise along with the image. Hence, I clicked the white Mask in the Hue/Saturation layer, and painted the noisy areas of the image using a soft Brush at 100% Opacity and with Black as the foreground color.
The Mongoose
Sudhir R. Das from Madhya Pradesh obviously loves nature. This is what he has to say: “While I was shooting some flycatcher birds in my backyard, I stumbled upon this mongoose going into an old worn down well. I was fortunate to get at least two shots of it. I have edited the image to the best of my ability, but as there is always possibility for improvement, I would me most honored if you can enhance it more.”
 Original Image |
 Edited Image |
Good show Sudhir. The angular lighting has brought out the fur texture. The diagonal composition adds to the overall impact.
You said you could fire off just two shots. Though I could be wrong, I presume that your Canon EOS 7D was set to fire a single frame at every press of the shutter release button. If that was so, please change the setting (permanently) to continuous firing at the maximum possible frames per second (7 fps with the 7D). Then practice to control your trigger finger to fire off just one frame or 2-3 frames or as many frames as you like. In situations like this, you then have a greater chance to capture multi frames. Not only will this trick get you more frames, but chances are, the middle frames will be sharper!
I note that your framing has cut off a small bit of the mongoose’s tail. Since this is not a close-up, I would have tried to keep the entire tail in the picture.
Note to our readers: Whilst I liked the picture, I wasn’t too happy with the image quality. I know that the EOS 7D is capable of much higher image quality. Hence I telephoned Sudhir, who told me that for some reason he had lost the original file and what he had sent us was a photograph of a print made from the original file. Now we know why the image quality is not what it should have been! Sudhir, this is a good lesson for you to store your images in more than one place.
To improve the picture, using Photoshop, I merely ‘opened up’ the shadow details in the stone wall of the well and very slightly increased the brightness on the mongoose’ left ear.
A note to our readers: Kindly ensure that you mention your name, make and model of the Camera, Shutter Speed, Aperture, White Balance, as well as the ISO. Failing this, your entries will not be accepted.
