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Inspiring and Supporting Photographers of Australian Birds

White-bellied Sea-Eagle

Photographed by

Alasdair Campbell on Sun 19th Mar, 2023 and uploaded on Thu 30th Mar, 2023 .

Resolution

1800x1800

Viewed

550

56515

Comment

Taken when with a Birdlife Group outing to Winton Wetlands, NE Victoria. I am interested in the impressions and critical review that my peer-group may have to this photo. The subject was some distance away and the image shown is only a small part of the frame. Exposure was compensated by about 2 stops. I am not aware of how to "sharpen" the image. I used Olympus Workspace to edit.

Equipment

Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mk3 & M.Zuiko Digital ED 100-400mm F5.0-6.3 IS lens

Location

Winton Wetlands, NE Victoria, Victoria

Keywords

juvenile, in flight

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Ian Wilson	2023-04-03 15:09:15	Hello Alasdair, Good to see you asking for advice here. Unfortunately, I am not a OM Systems shooter so unable to help with particular issues, I hope one of our experienced OM users will come on board. In the meantime, I thought it might be helpful if I wrote a few general comments about sharpening. I first want to write about 'capture sharpening'. Capture sharpening refers to a form of sharpening at the beginning of your image processing workflow. It is used to recover detail that is 'soft' due to the lens and the recording of the optical image by the camera sensor. Lenses are not perfect and have a small residual aberration and diffraction which causes the optical image to be slightly soft. The residual aberrations and diffraction depend upon the lens aperture, wavelength of light, object distance, position in the field of view, and the focal length (more important with zoom lenses). The camera sensor also introduces a slight blur because the optical image is discretely sampled with pixels of finite size and spacing, and bonded to the front of the sensor there are micro-lenses, an IR blocking filter, an anti-aliasing filter and a colour filter array, all of which can cause a tiny amount of blur. If the blur from the lens and sensor is accurately measured, then it is possible to remove it directly using a deconvolution operation (a form of sharpening). Deconvolution sharpening is also possible without knowing all the capture parameters, in this case, the blur due to diffraction, which can be easily calculated, is used as the stating point in an iterative process. Successive adjustments are used to improve the sharpness until no more improvement can be achieved. The disadvantage of this iterative approach is that the sharpening can converge on a local maximum in sharpness which is not necessarily the absolute best sharpening that is possible. The method is also prone to introducing undesirable sharpening artefacts. There is also demosaic blur which arises because the colour filter array only partially samples the image, this is called undersampling. It can be corrected using 'pixel-shift' on some modern cameras with in body image stabilization but only works for stationary subjects and is not practical for most wildlife photography. The undersampling blur can be partially ameliorated by sharpening. By now you will be able to see that capture sharpening is an important first step in detail recovery and fortunately, just one sharpening operation with the appropriate sharpening tool can do most of the work. I now want to mention another source of blur which is associated with noise reduction. Most noise reduction operations introduce a slight blur which also needs to be ameliorated with some sharpening. Good noise reduction software is always provided with some sharpening options to work along with the noise reduction operation. That brings me to the final sharpening step needed whenever you downsize a hi-res version of an image. You will usually need to do this to make the image fit within the maximum size permitted for our galleries. Downsizing is a process that resamples the image down to a smaller size measured in pixel height x width. This process always results in a mild blur which must be removed by 'output sharpening'. This output sharpening operation is the penultimate step in your workflow, immediately followed by converting and saving the finished image as a JPEG file. I notice that OM Workspace has what appears to be a good AI-based noise reduction and sharpening option which I expect will be effective for capture sharpening. You could use OM Workspace for your basic RAW adjustment, including capture sharpening, and output a 16-bit TIFF for local adjustment and output sharpening on an Adobe platform like Photoshop Elements. You can find plenty of information on how to use Photoshop Elements for local adjustments and output sharpening on the BLP website under the Resources tab. I hope this general discussion helps. Please ask follow-up questions as there is more than one way to achieve what you are after and other members will no doubt join in the conversation. Best of luck, it is not difficult, and there is plenty of help available.
Alasdair Campbell	2023-04-04 16:39:46	--Hello Ian. Thank you for your in-depth and knowledgeable comments. Some of the details went over my head, but you introduced me to the concepts of "capture sharpening", "output sharpening" and the specifics of other aspects. As a result, I researched David Jenkins article on Sharpening (In Image Processing April 2014) and your article on Sharpness Explained (In-depth Technical Articles April 2013). They helped me understand a bit better the components of sharpening, although both will merit re-reading. I use Olympus Workspace as I have the conception that Photoshop is possibly a bit complex & beyond my current level of ability with the Olympus program being simpler to use; it does offer tools for Sharpness / Unsharp mask / Strength (Amount) / Radius / Threshold / Noise Filter / Noise Reduction /AI Noise Reduction. Most of these have not meant much to me when I have cursorily explored them and I couldn't discern worthwhile effects, but I have now had a slightly more extended "play" with them on the juvenile Sea-eagle photo that I submitted (more aware of where the range of values should lie, as indicated in David Jenkins article) and I think they have brought about "improvements". Your comments, and the articles have encouraged me to pursue "sharpening" more fully, as I have been aware that my photos have tended not to have the sharpness that quality photos on the BLP website have, such as feather / eye detail. I have mainly assumed until now that sharpness was a result of shutter speed, accurate focusing, & lens quality, but I am coming to realise that there may be other factors in play. I will just have to try to manipulate / balance the various "components" of sharpening. Your comments are appreciated. I may submit an improved photo of my Sea-eagle - sharpened and possibly further cropped, although I perhaps need to also improve my birding skills and obtain a closer photo. Regards.
Ian Wilson	2023-04-07 10:11:04	Hello again Alasdair, I tried to get hold of the OM Workspace User Guide to find out more about this image processing software, however, it appears one needs to download the software to get the User Guide. I then looked at a few YouTube videos which gave me a good idea of how it works and its capabilities. It is an impressive piece of software and I would have no hesitation in using it for RAW adjustment and conversion. It should give excellent colour rendering for OM cameras and the AI noise reduction and sharpening should work well for capture sharpening and noise reduction. There is no provision for local adjustments and cataloguing, which you will need as you get more involved in bird photography, so you will need another piece of software to do this. OM Workspace will do a good job as the front end of your workflow, it will output a 16-bit TIFF with Exif data which you need to export to another program for cataloguing, local adjustments, downsize, output sharpening and final conversion to JPEG. Adobe Photoshop Elements is an excellent choice for this second stage of your workflow. I recommend you take a look at articles by me and Glenn Pure on how to use PSE for this purpose. We use Canon Digital Photo Professional for the front end processing but OM Workspace, which is very similar, will work just as well. Use OM Workspace to produce a 16-bit TIFF, then export to PSE and follow our instructions on how to do simple local adjustments, downsize, output sharpen and final conversion to JPEG. Good luck, Ian
Alasdair Campbell	2023-04-10 14:41:55	Hello Ian. Your follow-up comment was of interest & potentially useful in helping my photography improve. I have a 109page PDF manual for Olympus Workspace, which I have made some use of, mainly for photo organisation & some basic editing, but I feel it tells me what it can do rather than how & why. I am slowly becoming more familiar with it. I also looked at the Photoshop Elements website, which seemed to offer a wand that will endow my photos with all sorts of magical effects, and I'm not sure that is what I am after. However, it does seem more user friendly than Photoshop (& less expensive) and has a "fine-tuning the details" section as well as other enhancements that might be fun exploring. I am coming to realise that if I want to move along the path of better-quality photos, then I need to explore the options you suggest. I read the articles by Glenn Pure on Basic Image Processing and also your articles on Seven "Deadly Sins", which have helped expand my understanding of what is required to become more critical. If I take other bird photos with some merit, I will consider the workflow you suggest of using Olympus Workspace for initial editing in Raw, then exporting as 16-bit TIFF to PSE as a 2nd stage. A worthwhile challenge. Thank you for taking the time to make your comments. They have helped me spend my Easter week-end beneficially. Regards.

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	259/286 in Critique Gallery
	2/2 by Alasdair Campbell
	133/153 of White-bellied Sea-Eagle
	1078/1255 of Eagles, Kites, Goshawks
	29083/34570 Overall
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