Can This Image be Saved?

[Colin B]

I shot this pic of an Azure Kingfisher in a hurry from a moving boat in fairly poor light and, wouldn't you know it, the autofocus wasn't quite quick enough to get it properly focussed. I tried my limited repetoire of Photoshopping (correct lighting, auto sharpen) and achieved a slight improvement in the colour and lighting but could not do much about the blurring.

Before I get seriously involved in trawling You Tube for a tutorial in using masks etc (which I know nothing about) can anyone tell me if getting an acceptable image out of this is even possible?
DSCN5684.jpgDSCN5684 part corrected .jpg

[tandeejay]

(Checked your edit permissions which are set to "edit ok, please provide details")

I've had a quick play with this image in ACDsee, and in the "Sharpening" section, I started off by pushing the "Mask" slider all the way to the top, and then pushed the "Amount" all the way to the top and then fiddled with all the sliders in "Sharpening" (Amount, Radius, Mask, Detail and Threshold) to get this:

Blurry Kingfisher.jpg

Amount: 95
Radius: 15
Mask: 68
Detail: 75
Threshold: 26

I'm not sure how much more recoverable that is. The focus seems to be a little bit behind the beak, so the tail is much further forward and therefore more OOF.

Others with more experience than me might have greater success than me.

- - - Updated - - -

Looking at my version beside yours, I'm not sure I see much improvement at all... just a sharpening of the pixellation so working on the full sized image may give better results.

[Gazza]

Short answer; No
Longer answer: No way


Cheers -

[Mary Anne]

I agree with Gaza ↑

[ameerat42]

Practical: Yes, same here.

Fanciful: send it to CSI

[paulheath]

yeah ...its beyond help..... well unless the image below is of any help lol

DSCN5684.jpg

[Mark L]

At least you got a photo of the bird for ID purposes.

[Geoff79]

yeah ...its beyond help..... well unless the image below is of any help lol

DSCN5684.jpg

This is a valiant effort, but I’d agree with all the above, and as much as it pains me to do the same more often than I care to admit, that’s one for the trash.

[Colin B]

Yep, I was afraid of that. The bird was on a branch and shaded by overhanging trees and I had the zoom cranked out to a focal length of 143.

The camera was on auto at the time and had the ISO up to 640 giving an aperture of 5.6 at 1/60 so with all of the above I guess that is as good as I can expect.

[tandeejay]

Looking at this on my phone, it looks great. So dont trash it. Just keep it to show people on your phone

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[MattNQ]

You could always give it a bit of extra soft focus flare and pretend you meant to do it that way....

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[farmmax]

Great photo to turn into a drawing or painting. That's what I do with my out of focus ones .

[tandeejay]

Great photo to turn into a drawing or painting. That's what I do with my out of focus ones .

Yes, but don't stop at just drawing or painting though. Experiment with all the artistic filters in <you favourite photo editing software> or cut out the kingfisher and shrink it to add as an extra in that photo you just wished had a bird in the scene

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[tandeejay]

A candidate for the creative editing challenge

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[Tannin]

It is a straightforward matter to save this picture. Use the following procedure:

(1) Return to the same place or a similar place.
(2) Wait for the bird to come back.
(3) Re-shoot using a lower ISO and a higher shutter speed and/or a tripod.

(Achieving (3) is the tricky bit. A faster lens is handy, as is the use of flash. Even with a tripod, shutter speeds as low as 1/60th are questionable at (say) 500mm.)

[swifty]

I was going to say a straight out 'no', not savable. But then I guess it depends on what you want to use it for.
Others have suggested some creative uses.
Shrunk to a tiny postage size, it'll probably work just fine as an avatar if you really like the bird's pose.