Purple Martin Male in flight

[Amol Khedgikar]

Hi,

This one was taken just before sunset. (Kind of against the light if not dead opposite). 7D, 100-400@ 400 mm, F 5.6, ISO 640, cropped for comp.

I have been having a noise issue on my pics taken in good light and low ISO with my 7D and 100-400. I use LR 3.2 for most of my PP
I dont remember having to deal with so much noise during PP as I rarely go above ISO 400 or 500 (although this time its 640).
I have tried the NIK software NR Trial like Artie suggested a few days ago. I am not going crazy on sharpening (I think) nor am I pulling up the exposure/brightness too much but cant seem to arrive at an acceptable NR level without loosing too many details.
I know its me missing something but I cant put a finger on it.

Any thoughts?

[arash_hazeghi]

very nice dynamic pose and wing spread. The IQ isn't great to my eye however, head looks a bit soft but this is a very tough subject.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Yes, tough subject indeed. Male Purple Finches will need LOTS of over-exposure to get the proper details on them. Depending on the light / light angle, even with blue sky the BG is often rendered almost white with these guys properly exposed (less so for the duller females). Here it looks like you needed to add to the darks and this is where the 7D's weakness gets exposed (pun intended). Combining this with a largish crop amplifies this too.

Exposing to the right would be best, but I realize the more SS the better. I use the very same combo at ISO 800 with great results...

[Amol Khedgikar]

Thanks Arash and Danny.

I usually shoot them at 7.1 an manual mode but that day it was partly cloudy and the cloud cover was on and off (light was unpredictable). So I decided to shoot in AV. May Be the Head would be OK at 7.1. I tried to focus as close to the eye as possible.

Here I though I had exposed to the right but obviously not enough....

I have had great results with this combo in the past. Only recently I have been seeing noise that is unmanageable for me in PP. I was hoping to get some ideas from here.

[arash_hazeghi]

Amol, for a condition like this manual exposure is the best. Camera's meter will go for the sky underexposing the bird and thus you will have lots of noise and poor IQ. As Dan pointed out to get good results with 7D you need to exposure properly, otherwise the noise will be overwhelming.

[laurie golden]

You might try Topaz Denoise, I like it better.

[Amol Khedgikar]

Thanks Laurie.