Digiscoping with the Pentax K20D - some help please

[AndyB]

First time digiscoping with this camera and first time in manual mode, so still needs a lot of work before I get to Faísca's level (http://www.flickr.com/photos/faisca/3293785756/). Attaching to Kowa TSN883 with TSN-DA10 adaptor and 52mm step-up ring.

I screwed up and thought I was shooting RAW but I wasn't. I think I have it figured out for next time. What's the usual workflow - convert RAW to TIFF and then work on it in photoshop? The tiff I created from a test RAW image was 41mb in size, so I'm going to need a pretty big memory card if shooting RAW all the time. Does that size sound right?

Anyway, here are some of the first shots. Wood Ducks were close and still but under trees so pretty dim conditions. I thought a duck would be a good bird to start with and get familiar with the camera as they don't move much. A fast-moving Oak Titmouse dropped on to the path about 20ft away for a few seconds and I tried to see if I could get a few shots and was pleasantly surprised that most were in focus. I can obviously shoot a higher ISO as the titmouse didn't seem to suffer. In general, these shots look dark and "crunchey" and I was surprised at how many Wood Duck shots were out of focus. It was a cloudy, gloomy day (we get June Gloom here).


f/4.0, ISO 200, 1/20 - Photoshop auto contrast and sharpen more - too much noise perhaps? Higher ISO next time and faster shutter speed?
http://www.surfbirds.com/blog/uploads/l/labirding/16656.jpg

f/4.0, ISO 100, 1/8 - Photoshop auto contrast and unsharp mask
http://www.surfbirds.com/blog/uploads/l/labirding/16655.jpg

f/4.5, ISO 400, 1/250
http://www.surfbirds.com/blog/uploads/l/labirding/16657.jpg

f/4.5, ISO 400, 1/250
http://www.surfbirds.com/blog/uploads/l/labirding/16658.jpg

Not worried about composition right now. Just want to see how far the camera can get pushed and interested in thoughts about how noisey/....py these images are and any tips to try for the future both with the camera and post-processing.

[Colin Key]

Hello Andy,

I am probably not the best person to comment on your photographic technique since digiscoping (even with a DSLR) is a world apart from photography with a DSLR and telephoto lens. Also, I am not familiar with your camera and its limitations (e.g. noise levels at higher ISO, etc.). From the look of things I would say that your aperture (f/n) is too large; I normally stop down to f/7.1 or f/8.0 to give more depth of field, especially for larger birds. I normally shoot at ISO 400 (never lower) and often up to 800 but my Canon 1D Mk3 has very low noise - I also use "Neat Image" ("Noise-ware" and "Noise Ninja" are alternatives) as a plug-in in Photoshop to reduce noise in images. Your shutter speeds also seem very slow, even for a tripod-mounted setup. So overall I think you need better light to give you a higher shutter speed and allow you to decrease the aperture and increase the ISO.

I have had a quick bash at the first Wood Duck image, but there is a limit to what can be done to a JPEG:

http://s118.photobucket.com/albums/o100/Passarinhos/WoodDuck.jpg

There is already probably too much sharpening and contrast (NEVER use any "Auto" tools in Photoshop - they might work for landscapes, portraits, etc. but they are useless for birds) so the main changes I have done are to adjust shadows and highlights using "Levels", increase brightness and reduce noise slightly.

I would always advocate shooting in RAW (I know it produces big files but memory cards are cheap as chips these days so I have a load of Sandisk 8Gb cards) since this gives you much more digital information and more freedom for post-processing; JPEGs involve too much in-camera processing to start with (sharpness, colour, etc) and the compression (to a small file) produces a lower image quality. Unlike JPEGs, RAW files are a "lossless" format so you always have the original image to go back and re-work as better software becomes available and your processing skills improve.


My current workflow is:

1. Use Canon's own DPP to convert RAW to 8-bit TIFF files. There are other RAW converters (don't know whether your camera software has one?) and if you are using the full (CS4) version of Photoshop you would convert to 16-bit TIFFs - I only use Photoshop Elements v6 for iMac which limits me to 8-bit.

2. Import the TIFFs into Photoshop.

3. Crop, adjust shadows and highlights using "Levels", on most shots I increase colour saturation by +10, tweak the brightness and contrast upwards slightly, apply noise reduction with Neat Image (create an auto-profile for each image) and add a text layer for name and copyright if necessary.

4. Sharpen using "Unsharp Mask", but don't overdo it.

*At this point, if the image is especially good, I would now save this large TIFF file into a separate folder and use the file to print from - otherwise I normally bin the TIFF after re-sizing and converting to JPEG.

5. Reduce image size to 800 pixels maximum dimension (maybe 1000 if it is a pano shot) and then sharpen again with either a lighter pass of Unsharp Mask or (more often) use the Adjust Sharpness tool which was added to PSE v6 onwards.

6. I never use the "Save for Web" facility as this undoes most of what you have achieved above due to compression!! Always select "Save as" and save as a JPEG at maximum quality (12 in PS Elements).


As I have said to many people who have decided to spend a lot of money on a top end DSLR and high quality long lens, you cannot expect to get perfect images straight away - there is a learning curve in both photographic and processing techniques.

My advice would be find some good subjects in good light and practice, practice, practice. And, coming back to the large size of RAW files, you have to be ruthless with yourself in what you keep and what you bin. The most arduous and time-consuming task in my processing work is going through all the images to begin with and discarding most of them; normally, if I have shot 200 or so images I would keep maybe 10 or less.

This is very rudimentary advice but I will be pleased to make further comments if it is helpful.

Cheers,

Colin

[Colin Key]

Another one "cooked by the same method":

http://s118.photobucket.com/albums/o100/Passarinhos/16658.jpg

If I had been working on an original RAW file of this image I could have probably made this look as good as most people get with a much more expensive DSLR + telephoto lens set-up.

I think you are well on the way to producing some excellent photos.

Colin

P.S. Bloody boring little bird :ohdear:.

[AndyB]

Great advice, thanks. I like your cooked images. I'll experiment with combinations of raising ISO, f-stop and shutter speed. I'll also play more with photoshop.

I know digiscoping compared to true DSLR is not apples to apples but, out of interest, if you were shooting a moving warbler in the Portugese sun, what sort of ISO, aperture and shutter speed might you be using?

[Colin Key]

.......if you were shooting a moving warbler in the Portugese sun, what sort of ISO, aperture and shutter speed might you be using?

Hi Andy,

Photographing birds is difficult, photographing warblers is well nigh impossible!!

This is a shot of a Fan-tailed Warbler (I refuse to use the new name of "Zitting Cisticola", however biologically correct it might be) which was "flitting" about in a reed-bed last week. It was just after dawn, and the light was good, but "harsh". AF was more interested in the vegetation than the bird, so this was MF:

http://www.pbase.com/accentor/image/113279129.jpg

The camera settings: Canon 1DMk3, 400mm f/5.6 + 1.4 TC at 1/2,000s, f/8.0 at 560mm and ISO 400, "hand-held". The image is at least a 50% crop.

Colin

[AndyB]

Great shot! If only the little bugger had hopped on to the other side of those branches.

[AndyB]

Thanks for the advice. 2nd time out with the Pentax, digiscoping with Kowa. Shot in RAW.

[Colin Key]

These are pretty good Andy but #1 and #3 are slightly blurred due to movement of either the bird or the camera (or both) - this is rather different from what is referred to as "soft" and cannot be rectified in processing.

I have done a little bit to #2 which is the sharpest of the three images:

http://s118.photobucket.com/albums/o100/Passarinhos/IMGP1258.jpg

I have adjusted levels, reduced brightness but increased contrast slightly, applied some noise reduction in Neat Image (difficult in this shot as there are no totally featureless areas from which to create a "noise profile") and then applied a light pass of unsharp mask to the whole image. I also applied more aggressive sharpening to the bill using selection tool. The blurred leg and foot actually add to the image (IMO) since it imparts a sense of movement.

I might have asked you these things before, if so I have forgotten: Are you using the full version of Photoshop (CS) or Elements? Are you doing any processing on the RAW file or do you convert it to a TIFF for processing and then save the resized image as a max quality JPEG?

I think that things are looking good considering you have only recently started using this set-up, and to have obtained the terns in flight images (which I have responded to separately) is quite an achievement.

All the best,

Colin

[michael23]

hi andy, can you post a pic of and or describe your setup please. Also do you have to utilise any exposure compensation?

[AndyB]

Thanks Colin, looks much nicer - saturation seems to help and bird pops a little more. I actually wish the leg wasn't blurred but you can't have everything. I need a lot more Photoshop practice and also should look at Neat Image

I have CS2. So, I have the option of shooting 2 formats for RAW. PEF (Pentax and then can convert to tiff when exporting from camera) or DNG which Photoshop seems to recognise and open. So, I shot these DNG, opened in Photoshop (unticked all the boxes that wanted to apply some "auto" settings when opening) so there should be no processing done there. Then, I followed the steps you've outined previously, adjusting "shadows/highlights, brightness/contrast and saturation" and lastly "unsharp mask" before saving. Now, my problem is that I can then "save as" a tiff file. However, I cannot save as a jpeg and if I open the tiff I still can't save as jpeg. I can "save for web" and select max quality but I don't seem to have the option as saving as jpeg from a tiff. hmmm.

Michael, this is the set-up. A 52mm step-up ring and Kowa TSN-DA10 secures the camera to the scope. The Pentax K20D was a good fit and wasn't too unwieldy (or much more so than the Coolpix).
http://www.surfbirds.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=1794&d=1244948519

[Colin Key]

.... Now, my problem is that I can then "save as" a tiff file. However, I cannot save as a jpeg and if I open the tiff I still can't save as jpeg. I can "save for web" and select max quality but I don't seem to have the option as saving as jpeg from a tiff. hmmm.


Don't understand this at all Andy. I no longer use Photoshop CS and find that PS Elements does everything I want and more. When I select "save as" I get a whole list of different formats, including JPEG. Maybe someone using CS can chime in here?

As I have said before, I steer well away from the "save for web" option since the compression involved tends to undo much of what you have achieved in processing - it might be O.K. if you are publishing small images on a website where the I.Q. does not really show up too much.

Have you ever considered "downgrading" to PS Elements? I personally feel that the additional functions in CS are mainly for graphic designers, not photographers. There are a lot of people who can work wonders with CS but you could easily lose the rest of your life trying to master this beast, and I do not wish to spend any more time than I do sitting in front of a computer "messing" with images.

Colin

[michael23]

Andy, thanks for the reply regarding your setup.
:beer: michael