Male Cardinal - low light ISO1600

[VFTT]

I'm stuck in the house with a broken leg and a full leg cast, so my shooting options are pretty limited. I shot this out my window late this afternoon with a D20 and Canon 100-400. Low light, so I had to shoot at ISO 1600. The uncropped photo looks pretty good for ISO 1600. Not great obviously, but pretty good compared to ISO 1600 back in the days of film.

http://www.viewsfromthetop.com/gallery/birds/0382-cardinal-full-800.jpg


Cropping the image, does show the noise and loss of detail though:

http://www.viewsfromthetop.com/gallery/birds/0382-cardinal-800.jpg

OK, but not exactly publishing quality. But what do you want for ISO 1600? ;) I'm fairly impressed with the performance. I never expected much from ISOs that high. I did take a couple of test shots at ISO 3200 but they were pretty much junk. 3200 would be OK if you really wanted to document something and it was your only option, but I certainly wouldn't use it very much.

- d

[markubig]

Neat Image or Noise Ninja would clean that up really nice! great shot!

[TenaCJed]

I think the picture turned out very good. I agree that some type of noise removal may help alot. I love cardinal's, just wish I could get close enough to get some decent pics.

[VFTT]

Neat Image or Noise Ninja would clean that up really nice! great shot!

thanks. I'll have to check those out. I usually shoot at low ISO speeds - years of training with Velvia ISO 50. Ha.

I'll try them out and give them a go. I've got time to waste...

- d

[Keith R]

Looks great to me!

I've taken the liberty of giving the cropped image a once-over with Neat Image. I'd be happy to post it up if you'd like to see the difference.

[VFTT]

Looks great to me!

I've taken the liberty of giving the cropped image a once-over with Neat Image. I'd be happy to post it up if you'd like to see the difference.

yah that would be cool. I just downloaded the neat image demo and put the plug-in in PS, now I have to figure out how to use it.

- d

[Reyno]

That's pretty good @ ISO1600. Sorry to hear about your leg...I hope you get better soon.

[Stephen Stephen]

All things considered I thank the you've got a very nice shot D.

[tomcio]

Great shot. If you expose correctly, as you did, at iso1600 and you get a sharp image, like you did, there is no worries about shooting at that iso. Also when you will be cleaning this up... please dont make a plastic bird out of this. Simply blur the backgorund a little bit (if you have PS gausian blur =2) and leave the rest as is :)
You cand o the same in NN or NI. Too many ppl are too into the noise removal and if not correctly will make images look like @#$$ :) Good luck with the noise and thanx for sharing this great shot.

[tomcio]

I just tried it... works like a charm :)

[dazzlebea]

What a stunning shot!

[jr#8]

I just downloaded the neat image demo and put the plug-in in PS, now I have to figure out how to use it.
Ouch Howd you do that. When you figure out the neat Image in PS plug-in let me know I aint fiqured it out yet.

[superdiver]

You cand o the same in NN or NI. Too many ppl are too into the noise removal and if not correctly will make images look like @#$$ :) Good luck with the noise and thanx for sharing this great shot.


How do you control NI. I just use the default settings and am too affraid to change it and then NOT be able to get it back to "normal"

Do you have any hints on how to make changes in NI?

[VFTT]

Thanks for all the positive feedback everyone.

Simply blur the backgorund a little bit (if you have PS gausian blur =2) and leave the rest as is


tomcio, do you mean set up a mask and then use gausian blur on just the background? Just want to be clear what you mean. Thanks!

- d

[tomcio]

All you do is select the background with the magic wand... then with a lasso tool deselct the branch and clean it up a bit... feather the selection 1px and do gaussian blur = 1. I just tried on your small web copy and worked great. Leave the bird alone as it is a beauty.... also re-crop this as to give more room on the left (bird to look into). The more I look at this image the more I like it :)

[VFTT]

tomcio, thanks for the blur tip. I like the results. I might end up not being so reluctant to use ISO 1600.

http://www.viewsfromthetop.com/gallery/birds/0382-cardinal-800-blur.jpg

-d

[VFTT]

OK, I like the gausian blur so I had to try it on one more....he is saying "HEY, what are YOU looking at?!?!?!?"

http://www.viewsfromthetop.com/gallery/birds/0385-hey-600V.jpg

- d

[VFTT]

OK, I'm bored and I figured maybe someone might enjoy the story of this cardinal shot.

As I said in the oringinal post, I have a broken leg so I am stuck at home. I'm usually out taking my photos while I am hiking or xc skiing or mountain biking (how I broke my leg). I've only done bird photography a few times. I like bird photography but I never seem to get the time to do it. So I have some time now.

Being bored, I called my mother and asked if she could come over and set up a bird feeder outside my living room window. She set one up about 3 days ago and this morning I was happy to find out that the birds had found it.

I had my mother put the feeder about 12' from the window and about 20' in front of a pine tree. The feeder has a stick above it so the birds would land on the stick before they go down to get the food. I had her align the stick so they would face me. The feeder is close enough to the window to get a good shot with small birds with my 100-400. It is also far enough away from the background so that the trees would be blurred out and not distracting. I put it in front of a pine tree so there would be some color (green) rather than the grey/brown oaks. Yah, I'm an engineer and I had it all planned out. :oops:

So after a couple of days of waiting, the birds had come. I set up my camera and tripod and got a few shots of some black capped chickadees and a tuffted titmouse:

http://www.viewsfromthetop.com/gallery/birds/0342-titmouse-800.jpg

I hopped my camera over to my computer in the other room to see how the photos were coming out and see what adjustments I needed to make. From the above photo I could see that I needed to get more depth of field. I was shooting at f 5.6 and figured I should try again at f 7.1. I'm not used to working at this close distance - so far I just use the 100-400 for mainly surfing shots.

So back to the window. But then I found out that the ENEMY had found the bird feeder too:

http://www.viewsfromthetop.com/gallery/birds/0377-enemy-no_crop-800.jpg

Ugh!

My mother was nice enough to come back over and bring me a shield that goes over the pipe that is holding up the bird feeder. The shield keeps the ENEMY from climbing up the pole.

I hopped outside and installed the shield. I crutched back inside just intime to see the enemy come back. He just looked at the shield and didn't even bother trying to climb around it. He must have seen one before. He went straight to a nearby pine tree, climbed it, went out on branch, the branch bent under his weight and when it lowered close enough he jumped on top of the feeder.

UGH.

The birds will just not come when that big fat guy is sitting in the middle of the feeder.

So, I crutched back outside and moved the whole thing in front of a different window. This time it is not close enough to a tree for jumping.

By that point it was now close to 4 PM which is low light time in New England (I live in Hawaii but I am here because of my broken leg). After all that work I had to get a shot. I figured it was useless shooting at ISO 1600 but the cardinal looked nice on the feeder so I gave it a go. Glad I did, because now I learned this cool gausian blur trick.

Hopefully this weekend I'll be able to get some more shots in better light.

- d

[tomcio]

No problem. All of these are great shots with the noise hardly noticable. :)

[markubig]

man . . . i can't believe you can get this all from your window. all i get are the huge ugly black birds . . . what are they . . . crows?

[Gary Fairhead]

Very nice shots with the edited Cardinal looking very fine. Love the colors, perch and BG in all the images. You are pretty productive for someone who has a broken leg.

[VFTT]

Thanks everyone. This is actually the second time I broke my leg. After the first break they said it was healed and I rebroke it again in the same spot, so I guess it was never really fully healed. So, with the exception of 2 weeks in the middle, I've been on crutches for 7 months. 1 month to go. I'm actually getting pretty good at getting around on them. I can't stand sitting still.

- d