Barn Owl at dusk

Hello all, I've been trying all xmas to get a decent Barn Owl shot, the location is no big secret, its Martin Mere, the problem is that they don't arrive until the sun has gone out so its a bit of a lottery as to how sharp the pictures come out even at 1600asa !

Here's this afternoons effort, its a start at least

Doh, should have said, techs are Nikon D300, 1600asa 1/200 at 2.8 sigma 120-300,

and to complete the stupidity hatrick I've posted the wrong shot, imagine that shot but cropped a little off the right and a bit from the top !!!

one day I'll get this computer stuff

as you say steve it's a start, but the noise is very severe in the bg and you can never get away from the fact that the bird is too far away. One step further along the road to the shot you really want though.
Eric

Hi Steve,

A nice shot indeed. Hope you don't mind me having a go with the noise aspect in the image. The image size here is cropped hence the size plus I run it through neat image plus I added a bit of contrast using levels.

All the best

Vince

Steve,

With a bit of editing it looks really good, have you tried early morning? A barn Owl I followed would hunt until around 11am ish if it rained the night before.

Thanks for the comments all, I can see a day learning about PP in Mr Astbury's company in my future

I'll keep that in mind Liam, thanks for the tip

I quite like this as an environmental shot Steve. The noise has been mentioned but I can completely sympathise with the situation. As Liam has said rain can be helpful at times as barn owls won't usually get caught out in it as if their feathers get wet the lose the ability to fly silently which means the voles hear them coming! So if you have a couple of days with wet overnights then it can pay to be out the first morning or evening its dry as the owls will be hungry and out hunting earlier than usual