Mom and me

[Dick Boone]

This is from my first outing attempting serious wildlife image creation. I was using a Nikon D2h at the time (changed to a D2x shortly afterward). 300mm f4 lens; ISO set at 400 due to poor light, 1/250th at f9. I like the image, and have tried to reduce the noise by using Neat Image and Imagenomic, but I don't care for the results from either one. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[Judd Patterson]

Dick, I love the fact that you captured both the adult and juvenile in the same frame...never seen that with Crested Caracara before. The low angle also works nicely. You did well to get most of both birds in focus here, but I think I'd create and feather a selection around the adult's eye and run a second pass of sharpening there. There is a slight appearance of noise in the background, but at this resolution things really don't look bad. If you are really having noise problems I'd probably run a very heavy noise reduction with NeatImage and then add the cleaned image to the original image as a new layer. Then create a layer mask and selectively paint in (with black) critical areas such as the birds to restore some of the fine detail that NeatImage would lose. As far as composition, I think I'd crop off a little more of the bottom. Really nice image that you have here (I'm jealous too...this species has avoided me).

[Alfred Forns]

Hi Dick the best suggestion to eliminate noise is going to a D3 !!!!!! One amazing camera !!!

I'm very impressed by this image Getting two in good position is difficult to do There are different photographing alternatives but I would take this as it is Love this image btw for reducing noise I use Noise Ninja both programs will do a fine job !!!

[Nonda Surratt]

What a catch! I'm amazed at the beak color on the juvenile.