Ok what the hell happened here?

GraphyFotoz

1st time in my life I get to snap some frames of the local bears!
They aren't that common around here so I was elated to be about 75yrds from this Guy.
BUT....................

Something happened with the background on this shot I've never seen before!
Looks like a degouser was taken to the background. :scratch

My Sigy does have the Optical Stablizer could it be that?
The bear looks ok just the background is screwy.
I had to take the shot at the wrong time of day as the sun what high and bright.

Can someone explain what happened?
Also does anyone know how to blurr the BG in CS2 as a possible fix to this?
The only face shot I got. (It was taken in RAW)

USAIR

Well I have a shot looks just like this of a lizard.
I think it's camera shake...nerves.
I sure you were excited
my .02

Fred

GraphyFotoz

USAIR wrote:

Well I have a shot looks just like this of a lizard.
I think it's camera shake...nerves.
I sure you were excited
my .02

Fred

Dunno my OS takes care of that extremely well!
Maybe the Dark forground threw my sensor for a loop with the ultra bright BG....camera being set on AWB.

Andy

GraphyFotoz wrote:

Can someone explain what happened?

Did you have a filter on?

GraphyFotoz

Andy wrote:

Did you have a filter on?

Hoya Pro1 Digital UV and the lens hood was in place!
All my other shots the BG's are fine.


Other info:
ISO 100
1/160 sec
f5.6 @ 400mm

AWB was setting.

Andy

GraphyFotoz wrote:

Hoya Pro1 Digital UV a

Bleh. I *only* use filters if I want them for a purpose. No need for a filter here. I blame the filter, and the light conditions, and the lens characteristics - all in combo, giving you this hinky bokeh.

Lose the filter, keep the hood on.

kdog

In my experience, that's fairly normal given the conditions that you had. My 100-400L does that all the time. What sets it off are a close-in busy background. Over-exposing the background (which was necessary in this shot) probably exacerbated the problem. Dumping the UV filter may help, but probably still won't eliminate the effect.

For fixing it, look up Steve Ting's (Rohrrrir?) tutorial on selective sharpening. However, substitute a light guassian blur instead of the sharpening step. That's one way to do it.

Regards,
-joel

GraphyFotoz

Can someone help me with the BG on this?
I have the RAW image I can email if someone feels froggy?
I don't know how to do any of the fancy stuff in CS2 just yet.:cry

Might be a loooooong time before I see another one of these so I'd like to "save" the image if possible?

Would like it done for a 8x10 print.

Drop me a line at jbolden3@stny.rr.com

Jeffro

I don't think the background is the only problem. It looks like the bear is OOF a bit too, and there is a weed or something right in front of him, which distracts as well.

I hate it when that rare or once in a lifetime shot, isn't as good as I had hoped. :cry

I hope someone can come to the rescue.

Kenny

Message sent...
Hi Jim...

Email sent. I'll have a go at improving the photo, but am off to work right now. Will have to get to it when I get back.

Not sure what happened to your image background, but I suspect it's a combination of factors, as already suggested.

Cheers,
Kenny

GraphyFotoz wrote:

1st time in my life I get to snap some frames of the local bears!
They aren't that common around here so I was elated to be about 75yrds from this Guy.

USAIR

Here's my lizard looks very similar.
It was with the Canon 70-200 f/2.8
20D @ 200 mm 1/400 f/5.6 and I am sure the IS was on.
Mabe the IS has something to do with it ?



Fred

01af

GraphyFotoz wrote:

My Sigy does have the Optical Stablizer could it be that?

Yes, definitely. Keep in mind that the OS counter-acts angular movements of the cameras by linear shifts of the image. Hold a close-up lens in front of your lens (don't screw it in) and aim at something close enough to be in focus with the close-up lens in place (preferably with the camera on a tripod). Then move the close-up lens slightly up and down and watch the viewfinder image. The OS does the same, in principle.

But canceling an angular movement by a linear movement on a different scale can only work for a certain distance, for obvious geometrical reasons. So while the OS stabilizes the focal plane pretty well, the area behind the focal plane inevitably gets over-corrected, and the area before the focal plane gets under-corrected. So reducing camera shake in the plane of focus only comes at the expense of augmenting camera shake elsewhere. Whether this will cause a perceptable problem depends on the focal length, the degree of shake, the distance between the pivot point of the shaking and the lens' entrance pupil, and the distance of and the contrast in the fore- and background. By the way, it's the same with all image-stabilization systems, no matter whether they move an optical element or the sensor.

GraphyFotoz wrote:

Also does anyone know how to blur the background in Photoshop CS2 as a possible fix to this?

Sure, it's easy. Select the bear, invert the selection, and apply the Lens Blur filter. Use the smallest aperture radius that makes the annoying structures in the background disappear, and add a small amount (approx. 1 or 2 on the slider's scale) of Gaussian noise to the blurred background, or it will look unnatural.

The hardest part is to create the selection. There are many ways to do that. You may use one of the Lasso tools, or the Magic Wand tool. Or you may go into Quick-mask mode and simply paint the bear with black colour (which in Quick-mask mode will appear as transparent red). Thanks to the fact the bear is surrounded completely by blurred background, the selection does not need to be too accurate. In my quick'n'dirty approach (see below) I used Select > Color Range to quickly create a mask which I then fine-tuned manually with a brush in Quick-mask mode.

-- Olaf

GraphyFotoz

WOW thanx Olaf!!
After the fix it's really a super shot!
I'll hafta try it on a 8x10 I'd like to print.

SUPER!

Kenny

Looks like Olaf beat me to it! I had a quick look at it last night, but got home late and wasn't able to spend much time on it. Looks like you got it nailed now though

Cheers,
Kenny

GraphyFotoz wrote:

WOW thanx Olaf!!
After the fix it's really a super shot!
I'll hafta try it on a 8x10 I'd like to print.

SUPER!

01af

GraphyFotoz wrote:

After the fix it's really a super shot!

Glad you like the result. You can even improve upon that---you should try to bring out a bit more detail in the shadows of the bear's front. Use the original (i. e. non-inverted) selection of the bear and apply the Shadow/Highlights command (Image > Adjustments > Shadow/Highlight). Set the Shadow Amount to something like 15 - 25 % or so (and leave the Highlight Amount at zero). This will improve the rendering of the dark parts of the bear ... but don't over-do it, or it will look bad. Or wait---you said you have the image as a raw file? Then you can use the Shadow setting in Camera Raw, to achieve the same at raw-conversion time.

And when you sharpen the image for output then do it through the mask that selects the bear and protects the background, too. After all, you already have that selection handy. It is bad practice, generally, to apply blurring and sharpening to the same part of the image, for obvious reasons.

-- Olaf

GraphyFotoz

Ok I'm a moron!! :cry

I'm completly lost....not a CS2 wiz like you guys.
I just don't follow all this.

01af

GraphyFotoz wrote:

I'm completly lost ... I just don't follow all this.

You don't? And I didn't even get started on Layers and Layer Masks ...

Okay, forget the part about using Shadows in Camera Raw.

You'll need to create a selection in Photoshop---that's a part of the image surrounded by 'marching ants.' Your selection must contain the pixels that belong to the bear. That's what I called 'the original (i. e. non-inverted) selection.' When a selection is active---i. e. when the ants are marching---then anything you do to the image (e. g. Levels, Curves, all kinds of filters) will actually get applied only to the selected part.

First, you create that selection, for example using one of the Lasso tools ... or whatever way suits you. Then you should click Select > Save Selection and save your selection as a new channel. The new channel will appear as a black-and-white image at the end of the Channels palette, with the selected pixels in white and the non-selected ppixels in black. Saving a selection as a new channel (a so-called Alpha channel) will protect you from accidentally losing the carefully worked-out selection. Most likely, you won't really need that channel; it's just for safety.

Then you invert the selection, using Select > Inverse. Now you have everything selected except the bear. Apply the Lens Blur filter as described above. This will blur the background but not the bear.

Then invert the selection again, to turn it back into the original state. Now you can do two things: 1) apply the Shadows/Highlight command, to lighten up the deep shadows in the bear's front a bit, and then 2) sharpen the bear---and only the bear, not the background---using one of the sharpening filters, e. g. Smart Sharpen or Unsharp Mask. Both the Shadow/Highlight command and the sharpening filter will affect the bear's pixels only, as they get applied through a selection (in this context also called a 'mask', as the selection masks out everything that's not selected).

After you're done, you de-activate the selection pressing Ctrl-D (or Cmd-D on Mac). Now you may also delete the Alpha channel still holding that selection. If you want to keep that extra channel (in case you need it for future work on that image) then you must save the image file in PSD format. If you want to store the final result as a JPEG file then you must delete the extra channel, as JPEG does not know how to store extra channels. TIFF format can also save extra channels but some image-reading software may become confused when presented with a TIFF file that contains extra channels ... so usually it's a good idea to keep TIFF files free from exotic stuff like extra channels. That's what the PSD file format is for.

-- Olaf

GraphyFotoz

Well Olaf.....here is MY fix as per your instructions!
Thanx for your patients and time.

My 1st time working with layers and such.
Sorry I'm like leading a blind man!

Guess I did a good job?
The edges of the fur look a little wacked but given the amount of screwiness the background was in.....it's about as good as it gets.

Ticks me off cuz now all I have is a keeper for myself and not one I can frame and sell. NEXT TIME I'll either set the camera for multi frame or at least take more than one consecutive shot.

Guess in photography there is always a lesson to learn!

GraphyFotoz

USAIR wrote:

Here's my lizard looks very similar.
It was with the Canon 70-200 f/2.8
20D @ 200 mm 1/400 f/5.6 and I am sure the IS was on.
Mabe the IS has something to do with it ?
Fred

After looking at what happened to you I'd say definately!
Mine was more intense cuz I had more light colored areas for it to screw up.

I took the shot before the OS had it's time to suffle the glass inside.
Thus I got a pic mid-shuffle.
Now if I has shot 1 or 2 more frames right away I woulda got a decent shot out of the collection!
Lesson learned!!

bham

GraphyFotoz wrote:

Hoya Pro1 Digital UV and the lens hood was in place!
All my other shots the BG's are fine.


Other info:
ISO 100
1/160 sec
f5.6 @ 400mm

AWB was setting.

My only guess is maybe the IS was confused by the grass movement. Also you have the shutter at 1/160 and at 400 mm. I know it happened quick. If you could have gone to ISO 400 and then your shutter could have been a good 1/500 I don't think the IS would have been needed.

Maybe you can try and replicate it (with another subject) and see if it is indeed the grass movement playing havoc with the IS. Just a thought.