Saw this baby bird in a lamp post and came back the next day with my camera. Lets see what you all can do with it.
Fuji X-T20, Konica Hexanon AR 135mm f3.2, RT Dev, Stuart Sowerby’s Velvia sim)
DSCF9835-4.jpg.out.pp3 (23.4 KB)
DSCF9835.RAF (22.0 MB)
This file is licensed ATTRIBUTION-NONCOMMERCIAL-SHAREALIKE 4.0 INTERNATIONAL.
I had a lot of trouble with the white balance. As I would zoom to examine the bird or the noise, the WB would take these wild changes (I had it set to "as shot to reference). I ended up not using the WB module at all.
Otherwise, nice image.
If it helps, it was a somewhat overcast and hazy day.
Thanks, but I don’t think that has anything to do with what I was seeing. I had the WB set the way I wanted. Then I zoomed in to look at the bird in detail, and the WB shifted to a very yellow green and maybe some tan areas. It was weird, and not like anything I’ve seen before.
I’ll go look at it some more and see if it happens again.
Thanks.
My simple edit. Nothing fancy done here. I actually prefer the OP edit. Mine looks dull by comparison.
A few more tweaks to try and look less dull. Increased local contrast, global contrast and brighten the bird a little.
I’m sure you mixed things up. It was for sure a bright and sunny day. 
DSCF9835_01.RAF.xmp (25,2 KB)
or maybe a little closer:
The sun was bright, but it was also hazy. Humidity was like 60%
This, and your other edit, appear rather dark on my screen. I don’t know if that’s a technical issue or a question of interpretation. Side-by-side with @Thomas_Do’s edit (but those from most of others also look brighter):
Thanks. I agree. I have noted many times that my edits (rather, my mental ideas of what scenes would look like) are darker than others’. Very often during editing, I will take the brightness on up, examine it, tell myself, “Nah”, and bring it back down.
@TIm have you calibrated your Monitor?
If not you should do. If you don’t have a colorimeter you can help your self with test charts for white point and black point adjustment and grey balance adjustment.
Here is a site which helps you to calibrate your screen without a colorimeter:
https://www.simpelfilter.de/farbmanagement/weisspunkt.html
Unfortunately in German, but I’m sure you’ll find a tool to translate it, or you’ll find another page like that in English.
Thanks, but for several reasons I think it would be futile. Here are a couple:
Widely varying lighting conditions in my computer room. Sun (which is variable, itself) shining into a large window. Overhead lighting, which is sometimes on and sometimes not.
I have had eye troubles since I was 8 years old. In the past four years, I have had a detached retina in each eye. I wear “blue blocker” glasses at the computer to keep the glare down. (Yes, I take them off when assessing colors.) Cataracts (lenses replaced with artificial lenses), myasthenia gravis, and the list goes on.
There is so much going on with my lighting and my vision that I just don’t bother.
My vision (besides having normal long-sightedness, which often occurs as one ages – see presbyopia) is OK, but I share the same issue with lighting. I have shades, and I usually edit in the evening / at night, or before noon (on weekends), but I often question myself whether my edits will turn out to be too bright or too dark. When the sun really hits my side of the building during the day, I stop editing.
Ok, here is my last try. The cloud details are gone (what little there were), but he said it was bright and hazy.
For color often you can confirm if you are not seeing things quite right with the vectorscope. It’s a great tool.As for your monitor if it’s run of the mill and not a fancy one like mine and you have brightness and contrast well north of say 50 percent then indeed you may be way too bright for editing… But if your room is bright and you need it for your eyes your kind of stuck You could start to use the exposure picket set at 50 percent which is the default. I use it all the time. I start by letting it set exposure for the whole image and if I don’t like that I usually just change the selection to cover what I want to be nicely exposed… I might tweak that a little at some time in the edit but usually that is enough… I mention this just for you to test as a gauge for how you usually add exposure just to see how it compares…I can only imagine how hard it must be. I had to have a cornea procedure and had to have the cataract surgery as part of that because the drops would wreck my natural lens…always scary stuff…
Ooomph, that sounds complicated. While you can do something against changing light conditions, it doesn’t sound like you can do much against your sight problems. Sorry to hear that. My only advice is then to have a look how bright the others are editing the pictures. And yes, I know very well, this is a poor advice.
At least your information helps me, to see your edits in a different light (I often wondered how different your renditions look from one play raw to the next). Anyway, I wish you the best, that your vision is not further degrading and that you are able to have fun on photography and editing for a long long time.
Your second version is much better. Losing some bits of the sky doesn’t matter too much on a pic like that, as long, as the transistions are smooth (and they are).
