Little Tuffy In My Yard

[canonloader]

Watched this little guy chase all the Juncos away from HIS food. It was pretty funny to watch cause he's not quite as big as a Junco. He's been a regular for a few weeks now and getting quite relaxed with me in the window.

I used a new sharpening technique on these, so tell me what you think. I shot in RAW, and converted to jpg, then opened the jpg's in CS2. From there, I used Channels and looked at each channel to see which one was blurred. You have to look close, but one of them will be slightly soft, and it's almost never the same one from image to image, even if they were shot in burst mode. When you find the soft channel, use one pass of Filter/Sharpen/Sharpen Edges on it, then check out the RGB channel. It seems to work real well.

Checking for Juncos to the left...
http://www.freeassociationblog.com/forumings07/perchers/sparrows/yardsong1.jpg

Checking for Juncos to the right...
http://www.freeassociationblog.com/forumings07/perchers/sparrows/yardsong2.jpg

No more Juncos. It's all mine...
http://www.freeassociationblog.com/forumings07/perchers/sparrows/yardsong3.jpg

[EdV]

Looks good to me Mitch. What have you been feeding this guy? He looks a little on the plump side. :D

[canonloader]

Thanks Ed. Well look at him, he's got 3 or 4 seeds in his mouth at once. :D

[stefeb]

Great series. I get several of these guys at my home, but haven't been able to get a good shot yet. Thanks for the sharpening tip. Will give it a try next time around.

[Richardsmith]

Those look good mitch never heard of sharpening that way but i will give it a go see what i can do, Thanks for sharing :D

[canonloader]

Thanks Steve and Rich. These were already pretty sharp, but those tiny little feather vanes near the edge of the breast/wing area were slightly blurred. It fixed those up real nice. I kind of like the look though. :)

[Sindri Skulason]

Excellent shots. The first one is my favorite. :-)

[cfcRebel]

Beautiful chose-ups of the Song sparrow, Mitch. The Left & Right poses are awesome! :D
As for the sharpening, I'm not so sure (just being honest). It seems to do a great job on the obvious/rough edges such as the bill and the stick. When it comes to the fine edges of the feathers, IMHO it is not doing a good job. I'm talking about the fine detail on its cheek, throat, chest, and belly. I could be completely wrong here as i have not seen the unpp'ed version that is straight from the camera. But if these were taken with Bigma, and they weren't cropped too much, then i expect the sharpening to pull more detail out than these. Just my 0.02. :)

[canonloader]

Thanks guys. When I sharpened thse, I clicked back and forth on the histy palette and saw very little difference taking place. But here's the original and the same one as above, #1. I had to make a new crop from the full size, but that's all I did to it. Maybe this is a better way to look at it.

No sharpening.
http://www.freeassociationblog.com/forumings07/perchers/sparrows/yardsong1nosharp.jpg

The original from above.
http://www.freeassociationblog.com/forumings07/perchers/sparrows/yardsong1.jpg

[canonloader]

Gads, I don't know. I still like the sharpened one. Maybe it looks too sharp cause we never see them this way, or either way, with our nekked eyeball. :)

[cfcRebel]

Very subtle change indeed. The sharpened version looks a little brighter. After seeing the original, it is not the new sharpening method that caused the feathers look sticky. It could be the bird was a little wet when the photo was taken, or some other reason. Thanks for posting the original Mitch. ;)

[Alex Paul]

Nice work Mitch.... Glad to see results from the new lens

[canonloader]

Hey Alex, thanks buddy. Good to see you back. Another couple days and I was going to PM you and see what happened, but I figured you couldn't type in a body cast. ;)

[Linuxboy00]

Good ones Mitch! I have not had the chance to get out for almost a week, I'm about to go stir crazy.

[downywp]

Very nice, I like pic#2 the best of this series, it even seems sharper and brighter to me.:)

[guitarman3]

Nice sparrow shots, Mitch! You were the last person I would have expected to switch from your Canon 400 to a Bigma. I missed seeing your "trade-in" post of a few weeks ago in the Lens section and just read it. Sounds like the new lens is working out for you. Congrats!

[canonloader]

Thanks Dennis. Before the 400L came the 100-400L IS for me. I just missed all that extra zoom, and I was looking for sharp. The Bigma has all that. And, I'll probably get another 400L when I can afford it, so no loss. ;)

[pttenn]

These look pretty darn sharp to me! Wish I had a better sharpening tool than the one on Adobe 2, but what you were talking about sounds pretty labor- intensive.
Karen

[canonloader]

What's that? You mean sharpening edges in the color channels? In CS2, it takes less than a minute and I'm finding the results are worth it. I'm not familiar with Adobe 2, but if you can see the color channels in it and have a Sharpen Edges tool, then give it a try. It seems to be better than even USM. :)

[Stephen Stephen]

Nice series Mitch and your sharpening technique seems to have worked well.

[Reyno]

I really like the pose on the first two. Great captures in all Mitch.

[canonloader]

Thanks Stephen and Reyno. I'm still using this technique and it seems to work very well. There have been a few instances where it looked too sharp and I went back to some USM, but for the most part, it's doing good. A little more testing, and reading my new CS2 Bible, and I'll make an action of it for quick use. I'm thinking there is a way to adjust the strength of the Sharpen Edges tool, but I haven't had the time to dig into it. Maybe Fade Edges after using it?