Like some critique of this house finch

[Darcy Grizzle]

Thanks Darcy. How did you like working with a raw? This is a really nice job

So much better than working with JPG's in my opinion!

 

[Ben Egbert]

Late to the party on this one, but here is my take (all edits performed in LightroomView attachment 14590 Classic CC):

1) I thought the background color looked strange (although without knowing what the background actually was, who's to say?) But I tweaked it to a more blue type cooler look

2) cropped to accentuate the bird and lose some of the featureless background. I also found the pink blossoms that are way OOF to be distracting, so cropped those out too. Of course, the 5DSr can take some serious cropping.

3) added some clarity, a little vibrance, and a little contrast while dropping the blacks some

4) added a tweak of dehaze, that serves to bring the blue background up a little more

5) Used the HSL tool to get the hue on the background looking less magenta

6) sharpened some, after masking the background to avoid adding noise there

7) added a very small amount of NR in the luminance

8) exported, with low sharpening for screen

ML

Wow Mike, I really like what you did here. This bird really pops.

 

[Ben Egbert]

What a lovely lens this 100-400 is. If Nikon had one as good I woud be tempted to get it. Lovely shot Ben and I have not done much to it a fair bit of local sharpening and a touch of saturation. I did start removing and moving bits of foliage but then cropped that part out so just your original almost. KenView attachment 14594

It is Ken. Between the 5DSr resolution and the lens sharpness. I get better images than I did with my 500F4 on lesser cameras like the 1DS3 or 5D3

I like your rework.

 

[Ben Egbert]

This thread has taken off like crazy, thanks to all who participated. But don't forget, this does not replace this weeks Lets play 17.

 

[Douglas Sherman]

I was out f town this weekend so I am just getting to this this morning. I have cropped the image to make it vertical and provided more room on the left side than on the right. I also had to clone out some of the thistle that was protruding into the image from the left. By the way, that is a nice image, Ben. The bird is perfectly sharp.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Thanks Doug, this is a very nice job and provides a good close up.