Darkroom Challenge Digital Darkroom Derby #222 - Closed - Results Posted.

griffljg

griffljg

Top Veteran
Supporter
Location
Lota, Brisbane, QLD, Australia
Name
Larry Griffiths
Start Date
Aug 24, 2024
End Date
Aug 27, 2024
This is Digital Darkroom Derby #222, a digital image editing/processing challenge.

These challenges are open to everyone. If you have any interest in practicing or improving your image editing and post-processing skills, please feel free to join in!

Please read the rules here. Short version: -> Host provides the challenge image and selects the winner, who then becomes the next host.

If you feel that you may be unable to provide an image for the next challenge, please submit your entry with the words "Non Entry" at the top.

Background Information:

Yesterday (Friday) I attended a "Bird Photography with OM SYSTEM" workshop at the Boondall Wetlands, north-east of Brisbane. I had the opportunity to try out the OM System 150-600mm F5.0-6.3 IS zoom lens, which I had been considering as I want just a bit more reach than my current Olympus 100-400mm F5.0-6.3 IS zoom lens currently provides. The birdies weren't at all kind to us. - They were few and far away. This is where the 150-600mm lens came into its own, enabling me to photograph birds a lot further away than I would usually have contemplated.

But I did find the lens rather heavy and unbalanced at full stretch 600mm for my ageing arms to handle. I also had difficulty focusing with the same accuracy that I have on my existing 100-400mm lens. Initially I thought that this lens might be a bit "soft" at the long end, but then, on one of the other photos, I saw that some blades of grass behind the bird behind the bird were perfectly in focus. My OM-1, which I was using, has excellent Subject Recognition and indicated that it had locked onto the bird's eye and so I suppose that I am going to have to borrow another 150-600mm lens to find out where the problem lies. But, as the weight and balance issues have put this lens off my personal wish list, there is no pressure on me to do this. Now to find the AUD10k or so so that I can buy the OM System 150-400mm F/4 IS PRO lens. I can dream, can't I?

This image is of a couple of ducks at the far side of a lake. As I have said above, I am not very happy with the focus and would be interested to see what you can do with the photograph overall.


OM1G2251.jpg

The RAW and JPEG files are here: DDD #222

This challenge will end on Tuesday 27 August 2024 at 11:00am Brisbane Time (01:00 UTC).

Have fun! :LOL:
 
@griffljg

I am curious. Did you have a monopod or other form of supplemental support? Shooting at ISO 8000 is about 5.5 EV down from base ISO -- almost shooting in the dark! If you have another opportunity, try lowering the Shutter to 600th second for stationary subjects and see if the Sync-IS can keep it stable while the extra light is able to increase the accuracy of focusing. I have had problems getting good focus in bad light with other lenses.

I like this photo! It will be a nice challenge.
 
WhidbeyLVR said:
@griffljg

I am curious. Did you have a monopod or other form of supplemental support? Shooting at ISO 8000 is about 5.5 EV down from base ISO -- almost shooting in the dark! If you have another opportunity, try lowering the Shutter to 600th second for stationary subjects and see if the Sync-IS can keep it stable while the extra light is able to increase the accuracy of focusing. I have had problems getting good focus in bad light with other lenses.

I like this photo! It will be a nice challenge.
Click to expand...
I didn't use any type of additional support. I can't remember when I last used my tripod. The excellent IS of Olympus / OM System cameras and lenses has rendered this to be unnecessary for me in most cases, except for exposures of more than 1 sec. So most times I don't carry a tripod or monopod with me unless I know I am going to need it. From the lighting condition point of view, I have subjected my Oly 100-400mm f5-6.3 IS lens to far more challenging lighting conditions, including at full stretch, and still come up with pin-sharp focus. Trying to take photos of fast-moving subjects like birds in flight usually requires a very fast shutter speed which, with a lens which has a maximum aperture of F6.3 at full stretch, usually requires that a high ISO is used. I use AutoISO with a maximum value set to 12,800 and accept that I will have to use noise reduction in post processing. I use DxO PureRAW 4 and find this to be sufficient for my needs.

If a few photos at full stretch had come up correctly in focus, then I could have accepted that maybe the lighting conditions were the cause of my problems. But all the photos at full stretch were slightly out of focus.

I have posted my bird photos in an album on Flickr and left the EXIF intact. Have a look at the ISO values that I have used: Just Birds
 
griffljg said:
I didn't use any type of additional support. I can't remember when I last used my tripod. The excellent IS of Olympus / OM System cameras and lenses has rendered this to be unnecessary for me in most cases, except for exposures of more than 1 sec. So most times I don't carry a tripod or monopod with me unless I know I am going to need it. From the lighting condition point of view, I have subjected my Oly 100-400mm f5-6.3 IS lens to far more challenging lighting conditions, including at full stretch, and still come up with pin-sharp focus. Trying to take photos of fast-moving subjects like birds in flight usually requires a very fast shutter speed which, with a lens which has a maximum aperture of F6.3 at full stretch, usually requires that a high ISO is used. I use AutoISO with a maximum value set to 12,800 and accept that I will have to use noise reduction in post processing. I use DxO PureRAW 4 and find this to be sufficient for my needs.

If a few photos at full stretch had come up correctly in focus, then I could have accepted that maybe the lighting conditions were the cause of my problems. But all the photos at full stretch were slightly out of focus.

I have posted my bird photos in an album on Flickr and left the EXIF intact. Have a look at the ISO values that I have used: Just Birds
Click to expand...
Thanks for the extra context.
 
I used the raw file, cropped used Topaz Denoise and smart sharpen. I changed the highlight in the eyes of both birds to make it look a bit sharper. A vignette and some dodging and burning too.
OM1G2251.jpg
Join to see EXIF info for this image (if available)
 

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Topaz just unleashed a new version of Photo AI today. It includes some new sharpening tools. Just for fun, I took my entry #2 into the new version, up-scaled from 1600 to 4096 pixel width, applied some new "refocus" magic juju, then cropped to a close-up 1:1 aspect ratio. The sharpening was applied to the birds only.

edit: up-scaling applies it's own sharpening pass to the entire image, so the background would be slightly sharpened.

DDD222_02PP.jpg
Join to see EXIF info for this image (if available)

It's definitely starting to look more like a painting than a photograph. Now I wonder what some of the generative AI programs would do if you asked them to clean up the image in a photo-real style. Would we get new feather detail?

Not an entry.
 
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Many thanks to all who competed in this challenge. It was great to the the variety of software and techniques that was used. I resolved to not pixel peep, but to judge the images just as they appeared on my 27" LG 5K UltraFine display.

As always, thank you to David (@Peano) for your non-entry. I like what you have done to the two birds and how you have edited the background to bring the birds clear of it.

A welcome to @Rob R to this series of challenges. A couple of good attempts, but I see that you have run into the same problem as I did when using Topaz DeNoise. - That bubbling-type effect that is particularly evident in the background between the two birds and the back of the left-most bird. It might be worthwhile having a look at what could have been achieved by fine tuning the noise reduction a bit.

I liked @RobD 's treatment of the birds and the crop. It is just a pity that you carried your sharpening of the subjects through to the background, making it appear rather unnatural.

Here's how I judged the leader board:

  • Winner: Lyle (@WhidbeyLVR ) Entry #1. You did everything just right on this one and overdid nothing. I liked the panoramic crop which I felt gave some additional context to the image. The tighter crop on your second entry didn't fit in well with the additional sharpening, making the image feel just a bit over-sharpened. It is much the same with your final non-entry.
    I also fiddled around with the new version of Topaz Photo AI and am unsure about whether it helped matters.

  • Second Place: Rashid (@gecko). I really like your attempt. You haven't overdone it with the crop and have done a good job with the lighting levels. You should probably have turned back the sharpening a bit. - Excessive sharpening appears to have put a bit of a shadow (I don't know if that is the right word) behind the head of the right-most bird. It is one of those cases where, once I have seen it, I can't unsee it. ;)

  • Third Place: Hendrik (@Zeus1) . Another good entry. I can fault it on only two minor things. - The crop is possibly just a bit too tight. You could have left a bit more space ahead of the birds. The image also appears to be a bit overexposed. You would have done well to wind back the exposure values just a bit. If that had caused you to lose some detail in the darker areas, then you could have applied just a bit of shadow recovery. But a very good attempt nevertheless.

Congratulations Lyle (@WhidbeyLVR). Over to you yet again.

For what it is worth, here is my attempt. I used the latest version of Topaz Photo AI and, in hindsight, also feel that my crop was a bit too zealous:

OM1G2251-ORF.jpg
Join to see EXIF info for this image (if available)


Here is my attempt without using the new version of Topaz Photo AI:

OM1G2251-ORF.jpg
Join to see EXIF info for this image (if available)
 
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