Photos Be vewy, vewy quiet! I'm hunting wabbits! Help needed, Q on page 2!

We were at our summer house today and I got a chance to "shoot a wabbit"







Hope you'll enjoy, C&C are welcome as always.

Darkened

 

Love the last. The bokeh reminds me of an oil painting! Any pp?
What lens were you using Darkened? Iirc you shoot with an Olympus?

 

Hey Cyp

Just the basic stuff in Lightroom + a bit of vignetting. Borders and a bit of sharpening in Photoshop.

And yeah, you remember correctly, the equipment used here is the E-520 + 70-300mm lens.

Thanks for the comment.

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Damn i need to get the Nikon 70-300mm VR.

 

E520 is the Olympus, not a Nikon.

Any idea what breed they are? Their fur looks kinda weird to me.

 

Hey Firehed

Actually Cyprio knows that I'm shooting with Olympus, but I think he meant that he'll have to get a similar lens for his Nikon.

For the species, it is a mountain hare (Lepus timidus) in English if I'm not mistaken. I mean, I know what it's called in Finnish, but I had to Google the English name for it And on top of that, it's the same wabbit in all the pictures, it just moved a couple of meters after the first two shots.

It's fur is probably looking weird since the winter is coming and they are exchanging their fur from brown to white. It might also look weird since this is a young hare, probably this years product

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By the way do you have the 'after' pic of the rabbit in the stewing pot?

 

Cripes you must be good. I can only get within about 20 yards of the wabbits round 'ere and they bolt a mile.

The first two look a little 'caught in headlights' for my liking, but the third is natural and really nice. Well composed as well.

 

Oly is a 4/3 mount and has a 2x digital crop factor, so hes shooting a 140-600 effective. That makes it easier.

 

I'm on a 1.6x sensor + 200mm + 1.4x Extender. Maybe I should try again with the 2x ex.

I think 20 yards was a generous estimate as well. They're quite skittish round here.

 

This hare is wild, but has been around our summer house whole year, so it's pretty used to people now. Also, I think it still depends on its camouflage color and lets you come real close before bouncing

The first two photos aren't cropped at all, so I was about 1,5-2 meters from it, so yes, it's a quite trusting creature. The last one was taken from about 4 meters and cropped a bit.

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That last shot is awesome, darkened. However, I personally would crank up the fill flash in post. The bunny could use to be brighter.

 

There's nothing to crank up, no flash was used here. I could try adding some fill light with lightroom, but I don't think that's going to do too much difference.

Darkened

 

Last shot is the best, IMO...but be careful with sharpening--I can see a lot of artifacts. The first has very harsh bokeh which only looks worse with the additional sharpening artifacts...try blurring it out a bit to tone it down. Sharpening is OK to a certain extent but going overboard can kill an image entirely.

 

Heh, I figured none was used, I got interrupted before I had the opportunity to explain further and I just hit enter What I mean is to try to brighten up Floppy here up front as if you were using fill flash, like using a Curves layer in post or using Lightroom.

 

Try using a mask when sharpening so you only get the rabbit, and leave the bg.

If you want to go further and smooth the bokeh, duplicate the mask to a new layer inverted and apply radial blur.

 

Correction: Gaussian Blur

 

Not necessarily a correction, it depends what effect you're going for. Radial blur maintains edges instead of just smudging everything so has its uses like there he would maintain some definition in the bokeh but make it smoother rather than just a mass wishy washy smudged mess.

 

In this instance Gaussian would make more sense seeing as though there is no need to convey any movement. For the most part if attempting to convey movement use radial or motion blur, if correcting/smoothing bokeh use gaussian. Below are examples.

No blur (Sharpness set to 7 in DPP)

Gausian (4)

Radial (Spin 4)

Radial (Zoom 4)

 

BTW, The same cut out/mask was used for each image. Note the double imaging+blurring of the back of the dogs (race) neck using Radial blur.