Borderline Keeper?

[Joe Copalman]

Here's a shot I took out at the Goldwater Range a few weeks back.  It was one of those shots that blew my mind on my little 3" LCD on my camera, but seen full-size on my monitor at home was heartbreaking - noisy, subject too small, and focus was iffy.  This is one of those "awesome moment/crappy shot" instances in which you really, really, really want a shot to work out, but the pixels you have make it hard.  I think I got it about as good as I can get it.  Framed it so you can see the gun exhaust trail, got a little heavy-handed with the noise-reduction, and resized to 1024x683.  Ignoring what is actually happening in the photo, does the edit work, or is this one that I should just let go?  Thanks in advance for any feedback.

[Jay Beckman]

These are the shots for which Hi-Contrast Black & White were invented...

Try an aggressive conversion and see what you get!   

[Joe Copalman]

These are the shots for which Hi-Contrast Black & White were invented...

Try an aggressive conversion and see what you get!   

Thanks Jay!  I thought about that, but then you lose the color from the muzzle flash, which is really the only reason I made an attempt to make this shot presentable in the first place.  Maybe I'll try a B&W with just the muzzle flash in color.

[Jay Beckman]

Do it and I'll vector that Viper straight to your front door...!   

<j/k>  Try it and see what you get!   

[Dave S.]

Joe,

Would really like to see how a B&W version, with a colored flame, turns out.  For your originally posted shot, looks like you're right at, maybe even slightly over, the edge on either noise reduction or cropping/resolution.  Jazzing it up with some additional post-processing when you go B&W may help with that.

- Dave

[Joe Copalman]

Thanks Dave.  It's a pretty aggressive crop as-is and was a very noisy shot to begin with.  I'll try a B&W conversion later today.

[Jbong]

Hey Joe, you said in your earlier post that you even reized the photo 1024* 683. What do you normally resize it to?

[CJPalmer]

Joe, you might want to look into the Topaz Labs Infocus software. They just released this software that is designed to sharpen out of focus images. Download the free trial and see what it can do.

http://www.topazlabs.com/infocus/

[Joe Copalman]

Hey Joe, you said in your earlier post that you even reized the photo 1024* 683. What do you normally resize it to?

1800 x 1200. 

[Jbong]

I need to try that size. I always use 1024.