• Welcome to BirdForum, the internet's largest birding community with thousands of members from all over the world. The forums are dedicated to wild birds, birding, binoculars and equipment and all that goes with it.

    Please register for an account to take part in the discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.
ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Recent content by Michael McKee

  1. M

    Bogota Safety

    I was there this time last year and didn't have any issues. I never felt unsafe although I was warned at one point at Parque la Florida by a local to hide my camera.
  2. M

    Jordan off limits for birders?

    I have just returned from a 2 week birding trip to Jordan so I thought it would be worthwhile giving an update on the optics situation. At Amman airport my main bag was scanned and they found my Swaro telescope. I was taken to a separate office where they advised that telescopes were not...
  3. M

    Canon 7D Mk ii image quality - what am I doing wrong?

    I agree that the sparrow is not sharp and it looks like the branches in the foreground are sharper. If your lens was sharper on your last body then I think it is a calibration issue between your new body and the lens resulting in the lens front focussing. You can either have the lens and body...
  4. M

    How to Blur a Distracting Background

    I have CS5 and the content aware tool is useful if you need to repair something in the background. It looks around the adjacent areas and uses this to repair your selected area. You could potentially use this to remove the branch either side of the bird but I don't think much can be done in this...
  5. M

    How to Blur a Distracting Background

    A layer mask is just a selection within a layer. If you create a selection and then create a new layer the selection will be applied to that layer. You can create detailed layer masks in CS2. I prefer to use Topaz Remask, which is a plugin for Photoshop, as I find it allows me to get a good...
  6. M

    Lightroom: Creative cloud vs Standalone

    There are some workarounds that allow the Dehaze feature to be used in the standalone version. e.g. https://cutthruthefog.wordpress.com/lightroom-6-dehaze/ or http://prolost.com/blog/dehaze
  7. M

    How to Blur a Distracting Background

    I find it is a good tool to quickly get good masks of birds.
  8. M

    How to Blur a Distracting Background

    Here's my quick attempt done in Photoshop. I created a layer mask of the wren using Topaz Remask. On the background layer I applied a gaussian blur of about 3 with a layer mask created with the gradient tool so the foreground remains untouched. I also adjusted the colour balance and increased...
  9. M

    Annoying Ads

    I use this method: http://www.techsupportalert.com/how_to_remove_google_text_ads.htm
  10. M

    Micro AF adjustment

    This is the process I've used to check my lenses: http://www.openphotographyforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4708 It makes for a very precise check of the auto-focus system. With a zoom lens if the auto-focus is out it may be different at either end of the zoom range. If this is the case it...
  11. M

    Eastern Europe ...Lithuania, a birder's tale.

    Maybe my cold snap wasn't as severe as in previous years!! Actually on my first day it was about -10C and on the last on the coast it was +4C. To give an indication of the kind of views of the Steller's Eider we had, if you look at the pier photo in my previous post there is a wave breaking in...
  12. M

    Eastern Europe ...Lithuania, a birder's tale.

    Many thanks to Jos for the hospitality during my recent trip. It was great to go back and see the place in the grasp of an, albeit brief, cold snap. Peering out of Jos's cabin with about 50 Great Tits decorating a fallen tree and a backdrop of various woodpeckers on trees and feeders was truly...
  13. M

    Downloading from a 30D

    I don't think you have a problem. Zoombrowser and Fotostation are both simply displaying the contents of your My Pictures folder as they should be. These programs don't actually contain copies of the images.
  14. M

    Downloading from a 30D

    I have both these software packages on my pc and don't have any conflict problems. Fotostation is just a photo browser so when opened it will display photos from a user defined folder e.g My Pictures. Zoombrowser imports photo files to a user defined folder (I'm not sure what the default is)...
  15. M

    COUNTRY INNOVATION or PARAMO

    I am having to get a new jacket after discovering the shortcomings of my Mountain Hardwear purchase last year. Whilst in Shetland I realised that the underarm vents were letting in water when birding in heavy rain! I was wondering whether the Paramo jackets have a similar venting system and if...
See more
Back
Top