One of the more interesting birds I got to spend time photographing on my recent Kauai trip was the Red-crested Cardinal. This turned out to be a relatively tame bird, and I had several occasions to get quite close. I found that sitting on the ground and waiting for them to approach provided both a stable (and low) position from which to take photos, and allowed me to remain very still so as not to spook them.
A red-crested cardinal stands in short grass, looking for food
Natively found in South America, this species was introduced to the Hawaiian Islands in the 1930s. Even though its common name includes “cardinal”, it is not closely related to other cardinals, including the common Northern Cardinal found in eastern North America. Rather, the Red-crested is part of the Tanager family. Males and females are similarly colored, while immature birds have a dull orange color to their crest.
A red-crested cardinal stands in short grass, Kauai, Hawaii.
Ultimately, I spent quite a bit of time with a few of these feisty looking little birds. The longer I sat with them, the more used to me they became. In fact, on several occasions, they got within a foot or two, far too close for my lens’ minimum focus distance. At that point I wished I had a second body with a wide angle lens attached – it would have made for a very unique photo!
A red-crested cardinal stands in short grass, Kauai, Hawaii.
If you’ve ever been to Hawaii, you’ve probably seen the Hawaiian Goose, or Nene. A decedent from the Canada Goose, this bird is the official state bird of Hawaii, and is found wild exclusively on the islands of Kauai, Maui, and Hawaii. One of its main distinctions is the ruffled feather patterns down its neck. The Nene derives its name from the soft call it makes, sounding like “nay, nay.”
Like many once populous species, the Nene has had a difficult recent history. In the early 20th century, due to hunting and introduced predators, the entire world population was reduced to 30 birds by 1952. It was successfully bred in captivity and reintroduced into the wild, and today it is estimated that 800 Nene live in the wild. Even after these re-population efforts, it is the rarest goose in the world.
A nene stands for a headshot in front of green grass
On a recent trip to Kauai, I had many great opportunities to photograph Nene. Unfortunately, many had become used to tourist’s food, and were quite fearless in their approach. I found if you sit still long enough, some would practically come sit in your lap!
I first heard about Adobe’s astonishing anti-shake feature In October 2011 when they demoed it at their user conference. The tool works on photos that were focused correctly but had a slow enough shutter speed to introduce camera shake (usually from hand-holding the camera), resulting in a blurry photo. To put it simply, the tool will analyze these photos, attempt to derive the directional path that the camera was moving along at the time the photo was taken, and correct that blur path. If it worked, this would be the holy grail of photo correction, finally disproving photography teacher’s mantra – “You can’t fix a blurry photo.”
At the time it was touted as a feature “in development,” which in software speak means it is something we’re tinkering with, but might actually never be released. Therefore, I was very surprised when it was announced as a headline feature of Photoshop CC. Now that this was out, I was excited to put it to the test with some real world examples from my catalog. Would this be a handy tool in the digital photographer’s toolbox, or just useless demo ware – a good idea with poor execution?
To start with, I needed to find a couple of test photos. I did a metadata search in Lightroom through my entire archive for photos taken with my Canon 800mm lens at a shutter speed of less than 1/200 of a second. Even when mounted on a tripod with the image stabilizer turned on, such a slow shutter speed usually introduces camera shake. This results in blur, even when the subject is correctly focused. Most photos taken at this speed with that lens are mistakes, usually due to a rapid change in light or background. And almost all of them become throwaways, never seeing the light of day on my web site.
I quickly found two candidate photos, one of a female ring-necked pheasant at 1/180 seconds which was almost sharp, and a much blurrier shot of a swimming common gallinule at 1/100 seconds.
I first worked on the pheasant and brought it into Photoshop. I duplicated the background to create a working layer and opened the anti-shake filter. The first thing the tool does is to pick a portion of the photo and analyze the edges to make a judgement about the motion of the camera at the time of capture. It automatically selected a portion of the face, probably because it has the sharpest edges in the photo. I slightly adjusted the detection square so that it just included the most important parts of the bird’s face. This is the area I wanted maximum sharpness. Other than that, I left all settings default. I had no experience with custom settings here, and in those cases, it is usually best to leave things alone to see how the tool performs.
There is a large preview in the tool, but I found it didn’t really help me determine if the shake was corrected or not. I hit OK to see the following results:
In this photo, the blur introduced by camera shake has been corrected using Photoshop’s new anti-shake tool.
As I said, the original was almost sharp but not quite. But I was blown away with how sharp the corrected photo was! This definitely turned a throwaway into a keeper. (Thanks Adobe!) Here is a closer crop comparison to help see the improvement in sharpness.
The top image is the shot out of camera, suffering from slight camera shake. The bottom photo has been corrected using Photoshop’s new anti-shake tool.
Very satisfied with the results of the ring-necked pheasant, it was time to really put the anti-shake tool to the test. I opened the common gallinule photo and followed the same steps above. This photo is much blurrier than the ring-necked pheasant, but I was fairly sure the subject was in focus, just blurry due to camera shake. This time I again chose a target rectangle around the bird’s head, as this was the area of critical focus (especially the eye). The results are below:
In this photo, the blur introduced by camera shake has been corrected using Photoshop’s new anti-shake tool.
In this case, the sharpness improved quite a bit, but the results were not as stellar as the first photo. The resulting photo almost looked a little too crunchy, with small halo artifacts here and there. That said, this photo now became usable at smaller sizes. It will find a new life in web use and for smaller prints. Here is a crop to do a detailed comparison.
The top image is the shot out of camera, suffering from slight camera shake. The bottom photo has been corrected using Photoshop’s new anti-shake tool.
So what do these two real world tests tell us about the tool? First and foremost, this is not a panacea for blurry photos. This is no reason to go sell your expensive tripod on eBay. However, it can rescue some photos that are right on the verge of sharpness, but suffer from some amount of camera shake. And for those photos, it really does a fantastic job.
I’ll definitely spend some time scouring some of my older photos that I rejected because of camera shake. I’m very impressed with how well Adobe was able to pull this off – it is definitely a worthwhile and very usable feature.
This photo of a striped skunk will appear in the upcoming April – June issue of Bay Nature, a quarterly magazine promoting the diversity of the natural world around the San Francisco Bay Area. The image will appear in an article about the art and science of tracking the wild creatures that populate our increasingly urbanized world.
A striped skunk poses for a portrait in pickleweed growing along the San Francisco Bay
