Friday, June 10, 2005

The Power of Photoshop

About a year ago, I was dibbling for the first time with digiscoping. I was using similar kit to the kit I use today, except that the Coolpix 4500 was my only camera (and I was of course using that not an 880). Also, I had the inferior older 32xW Kowa eyepiece, not the lovely 32xWLER (which is visibly better, so to a camera would be a big improvement). I trundled along to Deeping Lakes and tried snapping some of the more stationary (though invariably highly-contrasting) breeding birds, such as Oystercatchers, sleeping Tufted Ducks and Black-headed Gulls.
The results were awful, though at least the lens combination had added an attractive purple fringe to the boundaries between black and white! To be honest, I was thinking that digiscoping was not for me and I was never going to get a decent image [as it happened my camera settings were all wrong, I had no idea what I was doing, and there really is no substitute for practice]. However, I thought I'd stick the pix on the computer and have a go with Adobe Photoshop [of which I was equally ignorant]. The result of some Brightening and Contrasting, plus some Unsharp-masking of one of my Oystercatchers was this:

One year on, I have learned to twiddle a few Photoshop knobs. Check out the same pic. Spot the difference?

Nikon Coolpix 4500 + Kowa TSN-821 + 32xW

1 comment:

Roberto Iza Valdés said...
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