Hairy woodpecker

[Richard Stern]

In a local heavily wooded area. The light was poor, I had no tripod with me, and I got this one image by bracing the lens against the nearest tree-trunk before the bird flew off.

D300, 300 f/4 AF-S + 1.4TC. ISO1000, 1/80, f/6.3. Pattern metering, no flash.

I blurred the bg using Noise Ninja, added some noise to the black on the bird's back to introduce a little detail, and adjusted the wb. Then sharpened the bird using usm. I hope the blurred branches and light reflections in the bg aren't too distracting. The original was a horizontal image, so I did a vertical crop, but couldn't downsize the bird at all as it was so close.

Richard

[Duane Noblick]

Tough light as you stated and I'm not sure I understand intorducing noise to show some detail in the dark feathers...to me it looks like specks or basically noise. Maybe I'm missing something? I do like the composition and the sft background texture.

[Sid Garige]

Richard,

Not sure adding noise will emulate natural details of the bird. Like the composition.

[Paul Lagasi]

Tough exposure on this bird with all the backlighting, good job on the background, not sure I would have added noise, maybe I'd run despeckle a few times on the back, but thats just me...TFS

[Ray Rozema]

Good composition. Like that you are at near eye level. Detail in breast looks good. I agree w above, don't care for the added noise. Might darken the BG a lillte. fill flash would probably helped

[Arthur Morris]

Relatively sharp with a very nice image design as presented but it looks as if the only thing that adding noise to the black feathers did was introduce tiny green dots, i.e., noise.... Just a bit short on the head angle too.

[Craig Brelsford]

I congratulate you for having the guts to shoot at ISO 1000 with a D300. I have a D300 and rarely shoot above ISO 800. The speckles on the back of the woodpecker are a real problem. At first I thought they were an unfortunate part of the original shot. Good to hear that you introduced them. I'd like to see this shot cropped a little looser and without the speckles.