Sony Diaries #1036: the Mallard couple is back

Every year, this Mallard pair pays a visit to the small seasonal pond in the back of the house. With the stay-at-home guidelines in this Covid19 times, I'd be home when they came. Still, it took my birder wife to alert me to their presence. So it's another year, another set of Mallard photos.

We used to think mallards mated for life; a quick Google check indicated that they only stay together until the female lays her eggs.
This pond lies behind a crisscrossed thicket of branches so the camera had to be set to Spot focus to shot through the gaps in the thicket. Anticipating the mallard's movement through the thicket is essential since the Minolta 70-210F4 (Beercan) is notoriously slow in grabbing focus. But it's not bad for a 35-year-old lens design that can be had on Kijiji/Craigslist for $100; if you're lucky, you'll get a good copy. All the shots were at the 200 (300mm length for this crop sensor)

The mallards were wary of my every movement and since  I wasn't behind a duck blind, I had to stand still or move slowly. Both flew away 15 minutes after I started taking the photos.

Luminar 4 Update

I bought Luminar 4 for its Portrait capabilities but just this week, I started using it for landscapes shot in my backyard and around my neighbourhood.

In a word: AWESOME! If you are on Instagram and you search for #luminar, you'll find some amazing photos.

Here's a Before and After using 5% Photoshop and 95% Luminar. The Before is a SOOC JPG, AWB, using an APS-C Sony A77II and a 25 year-old Minolta 70-210 F4 (the Beercan), It was overcast and the fog was just lifting off. I had gone out hoping to shoot a pair of mallards that visit the seasonal pond in the woods behind the house, as it is their annual thing to do. I didn't see them so I shot this scene, more as a record and not really hoping for any print-worthy images. If I had expected potentially amazing scenes, I would have used my Sony A7III and the far sharper Tamron 70-200 F2.8.

There is a plethora of imaging software out there, almost all doing the same things. I typically use Camera RAW in Adobe Photoshop. Based on my initial use, I find Luminar 4 to have more specific tools with more nuanced controls. For example, for this set, the Gradient Tool, and Dehaze to reduce the fog/mist, is superior to anything else that I have tried.

Based on this exercise, Luminar 4 seems to offer the possibility of getting more out of my SOOC JPGS, for maximum results. I can't wait to revisit the Olympus JPGS that I have from a Philippine trip 12 years ago. I had to use Photomatix HDR to get the best out of those files.

26Mar2020