House Finch

Any thoughts please? Tony

I think it's very sharp and the background is perfect. I love the bokeh.

Nice capture of this little bird. The background is fairly noisy so I ran it through noise ninja a couple of times. I hope you like the result (attached).

Leroy: that noise ninja certainly cleared up the background, which was nice. It also seemed to flatten the detail a bit? The real problem was using ISO 1000 to get enough speed to capture the detail in dim light. I'm saving my pennies for a 1Ds mk III. Regards, Tony

I see what you mean about the detail. That was a quick edit on my part. For a shot like this I would mask the bird and branch to leave all the detail intact and denoise the background only. I didn't mask the branch at all and did a rough mask on the bird. I'm saving pennies too - I need longer glass to get decent shots of small birds like this.

It's a definite trade off but I think even with the softening in the quick fix by Leroy, we get to enjoy the Finch without the distracting noise. The use of the History brush would quickly bring back the detail in the branch.

Dave and Leroy: I can't tell you how much I value your feedback. Seriously, I almost bought noise ninja. However, I decided to see what I could do with noise reduction in PS (CS3). So, working with the JPEG I originally uploaded, I used the majic wand to select the space around the Finch, and then applied the maximum noise reduction PS could muster. The result is the attached file. My question is, did this approach match the result of noise ninja?

Incidently, a print of the same image at much higher resolution did not show the same noise level. I guess I acquired most of it when I reduced the file size in PS and selected the 'preserve detail' option. Interesting. Thanks again, Tony

Your edit is pretty good. There's a patch of background under the left leg that needs noise reduction. I think I would also apply the NR to the tail feathers since they are out of the focal plane anyway. I use the PS noise filter both in the raw conversion and after. Sometime noise ninja works better, sometimes worse. It's nice for me to have more than one tool available for situations like this.

 

Great job Tony!

I totally agree with Leroy about having more than one tool (or arrow). I also found Noise Ninja to create some problems in some photos that I needed to used it on. First, the latest updates have algorithms for most cameras. Here's the kicker, noise ninja isn't just a quick fix, you need to learn the application, if you leave the defaults set as is, things can go bad.

I did this edit with Noise Ninja (NJ) once, then USM, then NJ x2. Unfortunately, for the posting, the quality needed to be reduced. See what you think, I think you did a great job.

Great job Tony!

I totally agree with Leroy about having more than one tool (or arrow). I also found Noise Ninja to create some problems in some photos that I needed to used it on. So, for me (not Leroy), the latest updates have algorithms for most cameras. Here's the kicker, noise ninja isn't just a quick fix, you need to learn the application, if you leave the defaults set as is, things can go bad and, that's what I did for some time.

I did this edit with Noise Ninja (NJ) once, then USM, then NJ x2. Unfortunately, for the posting, the quality needed to be reduced. See what you think, I think you did a great job.