Your Canon Photos No. 4: 28th May to 3rd June 2023

Very nice Steve, I like it.

Thanks. It is a quite extensive series of buildings all joined on, many of them open to the public. It is owned by the Austrian state. Lots of info here.

David

Thanks Dunlin.

The first time I saw it, I thought to myself, "That looks just like a river of molten lava".

Steve Thomas

Out with the R8 again today and the Tamron 100-400 at the local lake
It was very foggy early this morning so sky shots were not great so focussed on what was lower down

Pied Cormorant flying over the water with a large stick

Noisy Mynah staring at me from its perch

Red Wattle Bird displaying its red wattles

Side view of the Red Wattle bird

Egret fishing unsuccessfully

Spoonbill - possibly a juvenile

Lake scenery with the RF16mm 2.8 at f11 (hand held)

I am trying out DXO Photolab 6,x for 30 days as my usual software (Capture One 22) does not support the R8 and while I can convert the files to dng with Adobe's converter software I thought I would give DXO a try. Progress is slow as it's a little different to C1.

Some of the pics had the subject small in the frame so I called TopazAI (I own a copy) from within DXO and used that. But I don't think any of these images had Topaz applied.

Plenty of well focussed shots and the up close shots had good detail.

I am pretty happy with the combo, more reach would be nice but it will suffice for now.

Thanks
Paul

Paul,

Lovely pictures of exotic (to me) birds. I use Photolab 5 and like it a lot. I also use Topaz Sharpen AI, but am less happy with it. Sometimes it works wonders, but other times it makes the pictures worse in my opinion. I usually try it, and decide on a case by case basis whether to accept the results. Probably at least 70% of the time I do accept them. Unlike PL5, it is not obvious to me how the sliders work in SharpenAI, and I never understand why noise reduction is used in the auto mode when I have already used PL5's excellent Deep Prime noise reduction. That said, the perspective controls in PL5 are sometimes a mystery also! In addition, I have also recently been experimenting with Gimp and feel it has great possibilities.

I now return you all to normal programming!

David

Paul (fotoword),

I enjoyed seeing your photos of the birds. The Pied Cormorant is my favorite. I assume the cormorant is going to use the branch for a nest.

We went out for a hike en did enjoy the scenery.
a Cockchafer

Canon Eos R - Canon EF 24-70mm F4.0L IS USM (in Macro mode)

Nice shot @Photobygms!

I want to always try to contribute at least twice each week.
.
We have tortoises. They're a lot faster than most people think.
However, the other day I saw one real slow tort:

We shall start a new thread on Sunday 4th June. As midnight does not happen at the "same time" all over the world, and as I am currently taking responsibility for starting it I shall open the new thread shortly after 11 pm Central European Summer Time (MEZ), 10pm BST, 5pm in New York.

I will put a note in this thread when I have created the new one. So, please look out for it and move to the new thread when you see it.

David

Thank you all for your participation here: this has been a good week for photos and interesting comments and interactions.

The new weekly thread is now open HERE.

David

Hi David
Thanks for the reply and the nice comment.
Regarding Topaz, it's a mixed bag. I find that if I start from a poor base image it can make the resulting image strange or not even prices it enough.
Topaz AI is a little different if you let it do is own thing. Where you think the image needs sharpening, it might just apply noise reduction and it will sharpen a little as a result of that. And sometimes that's enough. You can then choose to add further sharpening. In each area it has options of strong or weak as well as the sliders.

I'm finding, for a low res image, that if I apply Deep Prime and then call Topaz it will only enhance the resolution.

I'm also finding for many images Deep Prime (or one of the other settings) can be enough and no need to call Topaz.

It's a world of discovery at the moment lol

Do you know if there is a focus check tool somewhere in PL6? I searched in the help but there is no mention of it.

Thanks
Paul

Hi Digirame
Thank you kindly for the comment.
Yes it will use it as some impressive nesting material. It's a huge stick. Reminded me of moose antlers lol.

Cheers
Paul

Photobygms,

That Cockchafer is an interesting critter. I've never seen one. How big is it?

Dunlin,

That's a neat sculpture of the tortoise. It must have taken a long time to create.

This one was close to 3 cm, a reasonable big one
I can try to say it in my own (crappy) English but think this is easier for more info: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockchafer 😁

Out of interest, what is your native language?

I'm born and do live in the Netherlands, So native is ofcourse dutch, but English and German(with Tyrolean influences) are used also sometimes 😁