The iridescent colors of a beautiful Mallard Duck catches the sunlight in this photo from Papago Park, in Phoenix, Arizona. This photo was captured during a beautiful fall day on a fishing lagoon in Phoenix, Arizona’s Papago Park. To maximize the reflected color in both the duck’s feathers and the water, I shoot without a polarizer on the lens. I like to use the golden reflections in the water as part of the composition of the photo. I do miss the pleasant evenings spent photographing waterfowl in Papago Park!

The American Wigeon duck winters in Papago Park, Phoenix, Arizona. This attractively colored duck is common throughout the southern United States during migration. A noisy duck, the male has a clear whistle in three syllables: whoee-whoe-whoe, whereas the female has a low growl qua-ack.As you will often see in Papago Park, the American Coot will often join their flocks. This was photographed in the late winter afternoon when the natural light is especially warm and colorful. This photo is part of my Birds, Ducks & Geese Photo Gallery.

Photo by Don Peterson. I create web design that touches the heart – http://newark1.com.

This photo shows a Mallard Hen in Papago Park, Phoenix, Arizona. This dabbling duck is one of the permanent residents of the fishing lagoons in Papago. I spent a number of pleasant evenings in Papago Park photographing the ducks and migrating waterfowl during the winter months.

This photos was shot using a Nikon D40, and the Nikon 55-200mm VR lens. The evening sun cast golden reflections on the water that I used as a background for this shot. Because the ducks were being fed, there were quite a few in this lagoon. I composed this photo by choosing the area I wanted to use as a background, and waiting until a duck waded through it. You can see more of my Birds, Ducks & Geese in the photo gallery.

Digital photographers who migrate from film often complain about the lack of sharpness in digital images when compared to film. The truth is that digital sensors can produce very sharp images. However, that sharpness is compromised slightly by the use of anti-alias filters in most digital cameras. All DSLR cameras have an anti-alias filter (with the exception of medium format digital cameras and backs). This filter adds a slight blur to images, to minimize the stair-step effect seen on diagonals, and the moire effect on that sometimes appear on fine lines in digital photos. That is why all digital images need to be resharpened in camera or using software.

The typical method used to sharpen digital images is Unsharp Masking. Unsharp Masking enhances edge contrast to create the illusion of sharpness. However, there are other methods of sharpening digital images that can produce better results. I have been experimenting with another form of sharpening that is quite unlike Unsharp Mask. Rather than enhancing edge contrast (which creates a slight halo on edges in the image), RL Deconvolution is designed to undo the slight blurring that anti-alias filters add to a digital image. In effect, it reverse engineers the blurring added to images by anti-alias filters. The result is a more natural looking sharpness in digital images. Deconvolution is a sharpening technique used by by the Hubble telescope (and spy telescopes) to extract the greatest amount of detail from deep space images.

There are several programs on the market that offer Raw image deconvolution sharpening, including Photoshop CS2 (Smart Sharpen filter), DxO, and a few others as well. However, there is an excellent free raw conversion and editing program that implements RL Deconvolution sharpening; Raw Therapee. Raw Therapee offers users the choice of standard Unsharp Masking or RL Deconvolution. You may come to the same conclusion I have: In most cases, RL Deconvolution produces greater image detail and sharpness while avoiding the artifacts and halos caused by Unsharp Masking. I find that RL Deconvolution controls in Raw Therapee gives my digital images a more natural sharpness that reminds me of a good film image. It extracts details that could only be seen with extreme levels of Unsharp Masking that would leave an image looking oversharpened. For viewing images online, it produces much smaller file sizes than a similarly Unsharp Mask sharpened image (that means faster loading web pages). And, did I mention how natural the sharpened image looks?

Raw Therapee is a great tool for the finicky photographer who likes to extract every last ounce of quality from his digital images. In fact, I consider the results it produces equal to the best (and most expensive) RAW image editors on the market. The RL Deconvolution sharpening tool is a wonderful option that may work wonders on your digital images. If you are willing to master this program it can produce amazing results. You will need to read the manual to get the best from this program.

The image shown above ( Mallard Ducks) was captured with a Nikon D40 and Nikon 55-200mm VR lens at 400 ISO. The raw image was converted using Raw Therapee and sharpened using RL Deconvolution.