Here are a couple of heavily cropped images I took in Oct. 2012:

Original full resolution:



Cropped images taken from about the same spot:






Feel free to share any images you all have, haven't seen people sharing many as of late.

Chris

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Hi Chris,

I was out and walking around Jinzhong Park in Yuci, China and took some pictures around the frozen lake. Also took some shots of a new row of houses they just built. I really love this camera.






















Happy Shooting,
Bill

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Hi Chris,

I played with one of your pictures, I hope you like it!

Bill

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>Hi Chris,
>
>I played with one of your pictures, I hope you like it!
>
>Bill
>
>
>
>

I think your edit appears to be oversharpened, and that has forced the background/bokeh to become harsh and much too busy looking. You also seem to have blurred some of the fine feather detail in the process because the small JPG you're working with had to be recompressed after you made your edits. The contrast is now way too high for my taste and doesn't look natural at all.

Sorry, sorry, sorry - I don't mean to be harsh - but I like the original better. I agree that the original could be improved somewhat in post, but not working from the small JPG posted in the thread because there's just not enough data to work with. You need either the original JPG or the NEF in order to successfully tweak the shot.

ADDED: the best way to sharpen a main subject without affecting a decent background is to use a layering editor such as Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. Working with the NEF, copy/mask/duplicate only the subject and place it on its own layer. Then sharpen or process only the isolated layer. You'll get much more satisfying results when working on edits of this kind. Working with NEF files will also avoid problems such as mosaicing and compression artifacts which can show up when working with JPG files.

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Howard Carson, Managing Editor
Kickstartnews Inc. - http://www.kickstartnews.com

Howard you are absolutely right in what you said. I was just trying to bring out the detail in the bird as there is not a lot I can do with such a small file. I only spent less than a minute on it.

Thanks for your comment,
Bill

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>I was just
>trying to bring out the detail in the bird as there is not a
>lot I can do with such a small file. I only spent less than a
>minute on it.

At least you gave it a try. What's amazing is the amount of detail still there in the first place after the OP's heavy crop.

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Howard Carson, Managing Editor
Kickstartnews Inc. - http://www.kickstartnews.com

Nice photos, did you shoot them through a window ? very cool !

Nope I was out walking the dog and noticed the bird sitting there hanging out. From the original pic, the foreground is another fence I had to crouch down to frame the shot. And they came out well I think...

Also these were taken on a Nikon 28-200 AF-D f/3.5-5.6G lens, which I bought to use for a Disney Land trip with the family as I didn't want to take the 24-70 f2.8 and carry it all day... The 28-200 is only a little bigger the my 50mm f1.4G when at the wide end... So works well as a travel lens minus not having any VR of course...

For you guys trying to pull extra detail out, there isn't much more to get with LR anyway even with the NEF as I sharpend (the whole frame) in LR4.3 with settings of 100/0.5/35/10. So there could be more with another program, but I'm not too worried about it. Also I do find the lens isn't the razor sharp compared to some of the current lenses. So the lens managed to pull plenty of detail from the bird.

Thx for showing interest guys, feel free to share any photos you guys have.

Chris

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