Hi Kevin, and welcome to BPN! Stop into the Introductions forum and tell us about yourself -- we're always delighted to have new people here.
This looks like challenging cloudy light. I don't like the noise of high ISOs either, but endure it to get shots when I have to. It looks like you got a basically sharp shot -- that in itself is a challenge.
If it's possible to overexpose a little, then bring it down in processing, the noise is better. It's always a quandary whether to have the noise or the look of nose reduction.
How are you processing and reducing noise? I've had good results lately with Neat Image and Nik's Dfine, and sometimes with Topaz DeNoise.
On the image posted here it looks sharp to me and I like the background and composition. A sharp shot with noise is better then no shot. Exposing to the right like Diane said and then bring it down in post if needed does help with the noise. I shoot with the canon 7D (Many 7D shooters complain about noise at iso 800 and up ) and have found that I can take shots at ISO 1600 and as long as I over expose a bit I don't even need to apply noise reduction in post.
Looking at it again it seems underexposed and a look at the histogram confirms it -- most of the information is in the left half. It's possib;e to bring up mid-tones without blowing out whites -- how are you processing? Shooting raw?
Color temp seems a little cool, too.
What did you do for noise reduction? The bird and its perch has the look of a little too much NR, but the BG looks OK -- there is some noise there but it doesn't bother me. People will often do NR on the background and leave more of it on the subject, as it can give some bite to the details
Here is a lighter image, although the histogram is still on the dark side. Is your monitor well-calibrated?
Nice pose and sharpness in tough light. I too thought the original looked dark. Diane's repost helps but as she mentions it could use even more. I would have cropped quite a bit off of the left, as I don't think what is there adds anything to the shot, IMHO.
The original is not too dark :). The WHITEs are right on the edge. Sharpest focus seemed on the side of the bird rather than the face. And the head needed to be brightened. I addressed both in the repost..... In addition I ran Image/Blur/Surface Blur on the BKGR only to lose the noise. The big broken branch is not ideal but as others have noted, this is a difficult bird to photograph.
ps: I could have pulled the curve up a bit on the middle and darker tones....
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Belted Kingfisher
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