Gliding Avocet
by Roger Kirchen
American Avocet (Recurvirostra americana) photographed in May at the same marsh near Edmonton, Alberta, where I had shot the Sora (Environmental Gallery).
There were quite a few Avocets around. This one flew by close (11.3 m) to glide to a landing behind me. Light was variable and I had set a high ISO to avoid potential motion blur thinking that it's a lot easier to try to denoise than to deblur. In retrospect, I could easily have used half the ISO for this shot. I'd be interested in your thoughts on noise reduction software (I use LR4) that gives the least loss of detail.
Yesterday morning, I was at the mudflats of a local lake and there were literally hundreds of Avocets and smaller shorebirds. The Avocets kept just outside of the practical range. They are truly beautiful birds. In a few more weeks, most of them will be heading south to warmer climes. And a little longer than that and we can walk across the lake!
Canon 7D, Sigma 150-500 at 439 mm, ISO 1000, f/11, 1/2500 sec., HH. PP in LR4, removed canvas on the right and added canvas to the left (CS5), no net crop.
Thanks for looking. C & Cs are appreciated. Roger.
Comments
17 commentsI use Nik Dfine2. I've found it to work very well for my needs. I know there are many other good options out there.
Keith, thanks for the info on noise reduction. I am using both the global setting (detail panel) and the brush. And yes, it is a pretty painful way of doing selective NR. I like LR4 because it's easy and fast and non-destructive. However, I can see myself spending more time on selected photos and possibly using other software for that. Thanks for mentioning your good experiences with Dfine 2.
Thank you so much for posting the details surrounding the shot, like the location, what was happening when you took the shot, and all the technical aspects. It really adds to our understanding of how you accomplished this (and doesn't make it any less of a feat!).
Tack-sharp, nice natural colours, and great BG.
The noise in the BG is minimal from here, and very acceptible.
I use Nik Dfine and Topaz de-noise.
Sandy
You've done well with the noise, but like the others here I use a plug-in for selective NR on those rare instances I think the image needs it. I picked NoiseWare because it was a little cheaper and rated slightly better in a test in a European photo mag comparing it with Neat Image and Noise Ninja a few years ago.
The problem with all NR apps is that they really can't differentiate between noise and fine detail so it is always a tradeoff when yuo apply it.
Well done!!
No nits from me, excellent work!
Ken Archer
Thanks for looking.