A black and white (and gray) dilemma

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diver53

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How to deal with bad light, and black and white birds that have their dark eyes buried in a black cap. I've pushed shadows and exposure as much as I dare and still have trouble with the eyes.
I guess one solution is not to shoot in bad light... :unsure:
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Hi @diver53 …Please accept my apologies for tinkering with your tern… I took a screenshot and imported it into my Apple Photos. Did a few adjustments with contrast, shadows, black-point, etc and came up with this. You can see the eye much better I think…. Again, accept my apologies for editing you tern….

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Larry S said:
Hi @diver53 …Please accept my apologies for tinkering with your tern… I took a screenshot and imported it into my Apple Photos. Did a few adjustments with contrast, shadows, black-point, etc and came up with this. You can see the eye much better I think…. Again, accept my apologies for editing you tern….

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The eyes look better, but the cap is grainy, legs are "off" bill is no longer black and the throat is blown. I don't think that is a good edit.
 
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Unfortunately as wildlife photographers we often end up in less than optimum light situations. I use LrC. In this situation I might try using a mask to only lighten the eyes a bit. Or, I might try using a curve to only lighten the blackest blacks. There is no perfect solution.
 
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Are these cropped? I'm having trouble finding a sharp image when I expand them even a little. I almost immediately get noise. Not sure what you're processing in, but it its Lightroom, first try noise reduction (Denoise), and then play with the Texture, Clarity, and Dehaze Sliders, or equivalent if you have different software.
 
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StarTracker50 said:
Are these cropped? I'm having trouble finding a sharp image when I expand them even a little. I almost immediately get noise. Not sure what you're processing in, but it its Lightroom, first try noise reduction (Denoise), and then play with the Texture, Clarity, and Dehaze Sliders, or equivalent if you have different software.
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Yes they are definitely cropped.
All of your suggestions were already done in LR
Yes there is some noise, but not objectionable except the Forster's Tern. However everyone has their own opinion of what objectionable is.
Please note that these are high-ish ISO on a really crappy light day. Tough conditions.
At 100% I find them to be quite sharp albeit some noise, except the Forster's
 
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StarTracker50 said:
Are these cropped? I'm having trouble finding a sharp image when I expand them even a little. I almost immediately get noise. Not sure what you're processing in, but it its Lightroom, first try noise reduction (Denoise), and then play with the Texture, Clarity, and Dehaze Sliders, or equivalent if you have different software.
Click to expand...
Isn't that more an issue of the max 1400 pixels we can upload on here? I find it a little frustrating that a forum where images are the top purpose, the quality is so limited such that nothing looks great larger than my laptop screen.
 
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diver53 said:
Yes they are definitely cropped.
All of your suggestions were already done in LR
Yes there is some noise, but not objectionable except the Forster's Tern. However everyone has their own opinion of what objectionable is.
Please note that these are high-ish ISO on a really crappy light day. Tough conditions.
At 100% I find them to be quite sharp albeit some noise, except the Forster's
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I'd just be trying to get some highlight/specular into the eye and leave it at that probably - if it's there to get I mean. Sometimes it's just not a success for the desired purpose.
 
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JWest said:
I'd just be trying to get some highlight/specular into the eye and leave it at that probably - if it's there to get I mean. Sometimes it's just not a success for the desired purpose.
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The only way to show a full res type image is to link to a photo hosting site. This is what I do but generally I keep the image size to 1900pixels high in order for the image to fit on a UHD screen along with all the other web screen info.
 
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Lance B said:
The only way to show a full res type image is to link to a photo hosting site. This is what I do but generally I keep the image size to 1900pixels high in order for the image to fit on a UHD screen along with all the other web screen info.
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Yeah, I am looking into smugmug for that and other purposes outside of my commercial work website.
 
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