Planet Earth

[Larry S]

Thanks for the great shots, John. Always await
your next post.
Best to all,
Larry S
Sun Diego

[Joe P.]

Hell yeah, John! You're welcome, glad I could help.

Man, that's some super sexy steelhead water. Looks like the big boys liked that blue. And those razor clams...mmmmm.

Thank YOU for helping to keep the stoke level high with another stylish and classy post. Keep up the excellent work. I look forward to the next one.

Joe

[John H]

DL - I think the big difference is in raw the shadow details are saved and you can pull them out. The shadow details get deleted when your camera edits the photo to make the jpeg it gives you. Highlight blowouts are gone in both formats and not recoverable. My raw files are 2.5x the size of the jpeg files. For a long time I used only the camera jpeg files but a year or two ago I started shooting raw plus jpeg. It seems to be the way to go. The camera makes a pretty good jpeg and sometimes they are better than what I get from my own jpeg edits but I keep using the raw.

The head on that stellar Jay was totally black with no detail but it lightened up really nicely in the raw edit. The background was too bright and I turned the highlights down to darken it. I probably also punched up the color on the blue tail feathers just a bit because I like that rich blue. Sometimes editing is just about what you think looks good as long as it does not look unrealistic. Color saturation is like sugar - it makes things taste good but too much can be an overload and ruin your food. Someone told me you lose credibility if you over edit to the point they look over edited so I try to follow that advice.

I think that is a tree swallow in your post. That is a good picture. A good pose on a good perch with a nice blurred out colorful background that makes the bird standout. I think lightening the shadows would bring out the wing details and the eye. Shooting in spot or center weighted metering can help. Spot metering gets the bird correctly exposed. The background will be poorly exposed but it is better to get the bird right and try to fix the background in editing. A bird like the tree swallow is tough because it is very bright and very dark and your camera can’t expose for both.

Spot metering is really good for bright fish like stripers and steelhead. That chrome steelhead picture I took on my phone which does not spot meter and the highlights on the fish are kind of blown out.

I am talking too much. I will stop.

[DLJeff]

Yes, tree swallow. I have a nest box in that ghost juniper and they check it out but never use it. I think it's actually too small.

Anyway, I might have to test a few shots in raw again. I completely agree with you about editing. Over editing feels like one is creating something other than the photo. And over saturating colors just looks fake.