Kestrel in shadow

[colincurry]

I took this pic early in the morning with the rising sun on a small part of the left hand side of the bird. I could not move to a better position because of flood water and fear of disturbing the kestrel.

I have yet to experiment with RAW. I cannot use Rawshooter because my PC chip is too primitive. Canon have included a RAW facility and I have yet to test this. I only have the Panasonic and Canon proprietary software, plus Microsoft and Paintshop Pro. I do not find Paintshop Pro very user friendly, but that could be me, of course.

I have tried to lighten this picture but it then becomes wishy washy. Adding contrast takes me back to square one.

I have uncropped similar pics.

Can any of you experts suggest how I could improve this pic, other than moving the sun!

Thanks

Colin

[DaiTheDragon]

The best I can do.



Dai

[matt_xyz]

there's no miracle solution to this one Colin. If you'd shot it in RAW then there would be a bit more detail in the shadows, but it would still be far from perfect. Otherwise it's just a matter of selecting the shadow area and then lightening using the levels function or similar. Dai's had a good go, but you might be best just lightening a little bit so you get a hint of some feather detail but it doesn't look too washed out and grainy.

Matt

[Boddie]

Its not going to happen to be frank. Having said that I like it just as it is. If anything I'd be tempted to just try darken those leaves, as they tend to distract some, and have a nice silhouetted image

[glsammy]

Yes, Boddie's right, the camera has exposed for the sky, and not the bird. If you'd have shot in RAW you'd have been able to apply the equivalent of at least two stops exposure adjustment plus reduced the shadows and raised the highlights, and could have been left with a decent shot.
Ideally though, when shooting against the sky, apply at least 1-2 stops of positive exposure control, i.e. slow the shutter speed down. I've no idea how you took this but this is the type of shot where auto settings simply don't work, shoot in AV or aperture priority, to allow you to alter the speed easily.

[Boddie]

I always shoot RAW if timing permits. Infact the kite shots from the weekend are the only time I have neglected to shoot RAW, deciding on JPEG only, for frame rate. I was pretty confident in the WB settings but have got this disastrously wrong previously, which is why I tend to go for RAW.

I take on board your comments about your PC but you should still take RAW and archive them, so you have ago at them at a later date. As Graham says, with a RAW image you may have got a half decent shot, if better lighting is what you desired, but with JPEG you are stuffed.

I would go the other way and darken the image. Maybe even merge in a nice sunset

[AlphaZeroOne]

I have managed to improve the image a little using curves and cropping in PS CS. However I am unable to attach it here until I have posted more replys/threads. Happy to email it to you if you want. Cheers.