EOS R7 Dark borders around background objects

[HonzaFnoucek]

Hi, I am an amateur wildlife photographer, quite new to the field, I use the R7 body and RF 100-400 lens.

I have been noticing weird dark borders around background objects on some of my photos for a while and I just cannot figure out what they are.

Would someone be able to help? What is it? How is it caused? Can I somehow get rid of it, either in post-processing or at least prevent it from happening again?

On the provided example, what I mean are the dark grey sort of borderlines around the leaves in the background, clearly separating it from the sky behind. Its quite weird that when I look at the photo I somehow cannot seem to notice these lines until I zoom in and then out on the whole picture again.

 

[johnrmoyer · Accepted solution]

You did not say what software you are using to view the image or what sort of screen you are viewing it on. Is the camera set to save a raw file? Is the software you are using processing a raw file while you are zooming in and back out and not finished until you have zoomed in and back out? What is your intent for this photo, documentation of a sighting or art?

What you describe sounds to me like more unsharp mask than I usually find pleasing. Too strong unsharp mask is sometimes said to create halos at boundary between light and dark. Is this a possibility?

If you place a CR3 file where others can download it, I expect someone will be able to diagnose what you are seeing.

If using Canon DPP software, you might zoom to 400% while setting unsharp mask and digital lens optimizer. For a bird  photos, I avoid auto lighting optimizer and increase digital lens optimizer to make feather details more noticeable.

This is only a bird feeder photo at our house because the bird stayed hidden behind foliage in shadows before going to the feeder, but the Canon DPP processing was:

CanonVRD:Image	WorkColorSpace	sRGB
CanonVRD:Image	RawBrightnessAdj	0.33
CanonVRD:Image	WhiteBalanceAdj	Daylight
CanonVRD:Image	WBAdjColorTemp	5200
CanonVRD:Image	ColorSaturationAdj	1
CanonVRD:Image	UnsharpMaskStrength	2
CanonVRD:Image	UnsharpMaskFineness	1.6
CanonVRD:Image	UnsharpMaskThreshold	3
CanonVRD:Image	ShadowAdj	-2
CanonVRD:Image	HighlightAdj	-0.4
CanonVRD:Image	LuminanceNoiseReduction	0
CanonVRD:Image	ChrominanceNoiseReduction	0
CanonVRD:Image	DLOSetting	70
CanonVRD:Image	GammaHighlight	-0.4
CanonVRD:Image	GammaBlackPoint	+0.000
CanonVRD:Image	GammaWhitePoint	+1.000
CanonVRD:Image	GammaMidPoint	+0.000
CanonVRD:Image	DPRAWMicroadjustBackFront	0
CanonVRD:Image	DPRAWMicroadjustStrength	8
CanonVRD:Image	CropX	1302
CanonVRD:Image	CropY	1075
CanonVRD:Image	CropWidth	1800
CanonVRD:Image	CropHeight	1200
CanonVRD:Image	CropOriginalWidth	5088
CanonVRD:Image	CropOriginalHeight	3392

Part of my reasoning about the processing was that the bright colors of this bird tend to saturate and clip in bright sunlight, so I set exposure compensation to -2/3 in the camera and then brightened it as much as I could in DPP without clipping the red channel or blue channel. I darkened the shadows because they do not interest me. The DPRAW processing emphasizes the feather boundaries. I increased the input white point to get a little more dynamic range. I used digital lens optimizer at 70 and DPRAW strength at 8. In the end, I do not expect that the sharpening halos will be noticeable to most people and the there will be the appearance of sharpness.

Painted Bunting (Passerina ciris) on a birdfeeder in Norman, Oklahoma, United States on June 17, 2024 ; 400.0 mm ; 1/640 ; ISO 400 ; F/6.3 ; distance about 8 meters ; https://www.rsok.com/~jrm/2024Jun17_birds_and_cats/2024jun17_bunting_IMG_0431cs.html

[HonzaFnoucek]

Yes, I am using DPP to view the images and I shoot all of them in RAW. 

What you are suggesting does make sense.

Anyway, I have now noticed that this is only visible when I view these images in basic windows image viewing software, as this software is automatically editing raw images, often resulting in things like this halo just described. It is completely fine when using DPP.

Thank you for this detailed answer and for your help, greatly!