We are having a wonderful summer here in the UK - rain, rain and more rain. Did I mention the rain? Not the best weather for photography but I managed to find a nice dry hide to sit in for a while overlooking a feeding station in a wood.
It was pretty dark, these were shot at ISO3200 on my 7D. C&C very welcome.
No.1 & 2 Bullfinch, one of my favourite British birds
What a beautiful bird the first one, Paul.
The quality of these images is very good considering they were shot at high ISO. You did good with the exposure and detail look fine
Socrate
That poor Coal Tit looks like he is sick to death of the weather!! Worst yet, I know how he feels 3 & 4 are classics Paul, really nice work all around in the low light.
A very fine set and amazingly noise free for ISO 3200.
What lens do you use, and what degree of Post processing.
Would you be able to post a an unsharpened and without noise reduction version of one of the images at 100%, preferably with a light background. I have a 7D and am a lot of problems with excess noise and general lack of sharpness. I don't know if the noise is inherent to the 7D or just my sample. This a link to the kind of noise problems I am having.
A very fine set and amazingly noise free for ISO 3200.
What lens do you use, and what degree of Post processing.
Would you be able to post a an unsharpened and without noise reduction version of one of the images at 100%, preferably with a light background. I have a 7D and am a lot of problems with excess noise and general lack of sharpness. I don't know if the noise is inherent to the 7D or just my sample. This a link to the kind of noise problems I am having.
Happy to oblige. At the end of this mail I include a 100% crop of the first image from the post above. I've done nothing to this crop other than open it in DPP and set the noise reduction sliders both to 0. The sharpening has been left at the default level of 3. I converted it to a jpeg and cropped it in Photoshop Elements.
At 100% the image is a little soft as it was shot with a 2x TC on my Sigma 120-300mm F2.8 OS lens and at a relatively low shutter speed (handheld): 1/250s at f/7.1, focal length was 526.0mm, ISO3200.
The processing I used to produce the image in the original post was pretty simple (this was all done in Photoshop Elements after converting the raw file to a jpeg in DPP, again with 0 noise reduction in DPP and sharpening left at 3):
1. I used Topaz Denoise 5 to selectively apply noise reduction to the background, I went quite heavy on this as it is not the subject of the picture and is an out of focus area.
2. I used Topaz Denoise again on the bird selectively, but to a much lower degree.
3. I don't remember the details, but I may have made some small tweaks to the levels etc – but not much as the original exposure was pretty good.
4. I cropped the image and down sized it to 96 DPI and 9 inches wide for use on the web.
5. I sharpened the image in Photoshop Elements and saved as a high quality JPEG. I then posted this on my pbase site and it is this image that is included in the post above.
If I was processing the image to print I would do things slightly differently of course. I don't print much above 8 x 10 inches so I can't really say how big a print I think I could get from this image with it still being of acceptable quality (a subjective point of course).
Let me know via PM if I haven't made anything clear here or if this raises other questions.
mikeengles wrote:
I have a 7D and am a lot of problems with excess noise and general lack of sharpness. I don't know if the noise is inherent to the 7D or just my sample.
7D noise cleans up very nicely, and perhaps it is your lens that is not sharp:
Thanks for the examples. I have to say that they look pretty similar to what I get, including the 'sparkles', bright pixels near 100% luminosity, which after even modest sharpening come up to 100%. I use Neat Image which uses a sample based method of
NR. This does not reduce or remove 'sparkles', as it does not regard it as noise. I am going to try making a custom noise profile that includes the sparkles, to see if that removes the noisy beasts. DPP seems to deal with the noisy pixels, but it really mashes the image, and after necessary sharpening the 'sparkles' reappear.
Perhaps it is because I also have a 5D2, that makes me very fussy, as I have never encountered these noisy pixels before.
I suppose the problem is that I really have no benchmark for 7D images out of the camera, to be able to judge sharpness.
This is a link to an image, which I think is good. Converted in DPP, sharpness 3, no other processing. It can be sharpened well, with a small amont of NR.ISO 400. Taken at about 10m, 100% crop
The next one taken in my garden at about 6m, I consider soft. It can be sharpened, but it brings up the noise. ISO640. The lighting is dull, but I expected more crisp detail. 1/500 F6.3 sharpness 3 no other processing, 100% crop. http://www.dpreview.com/galleries/4402957911/photos/2066294/greattit
3 & 4 are classics Paul, really nice work all around in the low light. 
