Too early...

[Ferco]

lol woke up and saw some wierd shapes swooping around outside... was about to go back to sleep when i jumped out of bed... i was like what the.. then i realised that it would be awsome to take some pics witht the bigma; its light!!! lol
was difficult to choose just 2... if you want to see others then feel free to visit my smugmug...

[Ferco]

ok i know im not meant to post more than 2 but i couldn''t resist it.... shoot me now!!! lol sorry

love the second one- You go hight, I'll go low...

sorry could i also get a posative ID from anyone?

[Gerry@Rick]

We are sure it's a Martin, but, unsure which one although we favour a Sand Martin.

House Martins tend to be blacker plumage and have a large white Bumbag at the rear where the wings and tail join.

Sand Martin and Crag Martin are both browner. The underneath of the Crag Martin has more colour overall. The Sand Martin is whiter underneath with a brown bar across the throat.

[IanC_UK]

Is a House Martin, Sand Martin has a collar round its neck usually, nice close shots, although it looks like they have had noise reducing software used? and lost some detail !

Would definitely try and get some more though :)

[Ferco]

yea lots of noise reduction lol... its a huge problem of having a bigma a being a noob! lol
was prettty sure it was martin, originally thought it was a house martin but then i saw a pic of a sand martin, which threw me off completely lol, thanks for the id and comments

[Ed Rotberg]

yea lots of noise reduction lol... its a huge problem of having a bigma a being a noob! lol


Richard,

I think these might be really nice images, but I agree with Ian that you over-did the NR on these. They appear to be well focused, but it is hard to tell with all of the NR. Everything in the image looks plastic! :(

Since you have IMAGE EDITING OK, could you provide a link to an original of one of the images, perhaps the first one? I'd be happy to give it a different "treatment" that would preserve the detail but address much of the noise. I probably wouldn't even use any NR software for this.

I've said this in other posts, but IMHO, NR software should be avoided as much as possible for bird (or mammal) wildlife photography. Most people don't understand how to use masking into order to avoid clobbering detail, and I for one would rather see the noise along with the detail, than have that detail destroyed by NR. I probably should do this rant in a separate post. hmmmmm.....

= Ed =

[Ferco]

really, Ed? awesome cheers... i was kinda worried about using NR, as i was told to do it by other peeps... but obviously it depends on the pic... it seemed to work on my sunrise landscape pics... hmm... OK here's the original:

i definitely agree NOW that NR should be avoided when possible, and if necessary used with delicate touch....

[Ed Rotberg]

Richard,

Is this the full sized original (i.e. just cropped)? No problem if it is, but it's always best to work on the original if this has already been resized.

Anyhow, since this image is really easy to work on, this only took about 3 minutes, and I didn't use any NR tools at all. I just used features of Photoshop. You can always spend more time and get better and better results, but at some point you reach diminishing returns. Anyhow, here is my quick, 3-minute treatment.

http://www.edrotberg.org/images/swallows%20452.jpg

Let me know what you think.

= Ed =

[Ed Rotberg]

really, Ed? awesome cheers... i was kinda worried about using NR, as i was told to do it by other peeps... but obviously it depends on the pic... it seemed to work on my sunrise landscape pics... hmm...

Richard,

There is nothing wrong with NR if used for the right images and with a bit of restraint. I just personally feel that bird or mammal photography is almost never the right instance. Shooting cars at an auto show? Yeah, go for it - not much fine detail to lose there as most stuff is already smooth and shiny to begin with. Sunsets, OK, but why not just use a lower ISO?

The problem for us bird photogs is that we are often shooting at high ISOs just to get the shots as we use long lenses and need the fast shutter speed for birds. The temptation can be pretty large to try to eliminate noise with the tools, and some people get OK (rarely good) results with birds this way. But usually in those cases they don't squash the noise very much, or they are using masking techniques (as I have done above) to limit the areas in which they are applying the noise reduction. It is very difficult to do a good job of noise removal in anything that has the level of fine detail that a feather has.

All IMHO. YMMV.

= Ed =

[Anthony J Howe]

Good find Richard of the House Martin, the first one has the potential of being a really good shot, with it's spread of wings across the page. House Martins white and blackness against a deep blue sky can cause havoc with colouring to PP them.
Noice reduction software has it's place to improve has any other tools or plugins in Photoshop for example.
I tend to use NR for the background noise while the bird is masked as you do lose detail and overdoing the whole image can turn the subject like birds into plastic looking and I'm afraid these shots are a classic example .
However Ed, has shown how to improve the first image and is a tremendous improvement and looks good.
Looking at the unprocessed image it seems to have had a high ISO, what is the ISO for this shot Richard?

In your last shot I love the acrobatic flight of the house Martins, thats a good capture. Well done.

[Sindri Skulason]

Good shots. :-)

[Phreddie]

Good shots - and thanks to the other posters for the NR lesson and demo.

And by the way they are definitely house martins. Sand martins don't have a white rump, and have a less forked tail (apart from being more brown than black as well).