Greeen Heron in Flight

[Kurt Bowman]

Sony a9ii, 200-600mm, 1.4 TC
1/3200 at f/9, ISO 5000

[Dorian Anderson]

Action, no-shadow pose, color, composition, and eye contact are all perfect, but it looks like the image quality has taken a significant hit at f/9 and ISO 5000. I'm not a processing expert, but I
wonder what else can be done to to get more refined and natural looking detail. Apart from a slightly hot throat, that's all that this image lacks.

[William Dickson]

I can see where Dorian is coming from....but, a great looking frame, which I would recommend another go at the processing...so much going for it.

Will

[David Roach]

Love the light and shadows in this one. TFS

[Brian Sump]

Kurt, good to see a local on here :-)

So yeah, the overall canvas has a ton of upside. The background is nice and dramatic, light hitting the subject is good.

The noise is quite pronounced on the subject, which may be expected at ISO 5000 on the a9? Did you manually increase exposure on the subject, it can definitely enhance the noise.

Maybe take a shot at a round of Denoise, maybe like 15/0 or something and fun final sharpening in PS with USM/SS and see if you like it.

[dankearl]

You could maybe get better IQ with a lot of work but it looks like it
was not exposed perfect and you need good exposure with any camera at iso5000.
Nice Pose and BG.

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Kurt, great flight pose, and the Heron pops against the darker BG. Overall, nice and sharp, and noise already mentioned.

[Arthur Morris]

I's love to have a crack at the raw file here. If you are OK with that, shoot me a link via e-mail using a large file sending service.

with love, artie