Great Horned Owl Chicks Sharing a Meal With Mom.....ISO 20,000

[Doug Brown]

My wife and I spent the late afternoon yesterday photographing a GHO nest at a nearby school. There are 4 babies in this nest and the parents keep a watchful eye at all times from nearby trees. After a fun shoot, we decided to stick around and observe the owl behavior in the approaching darkness. It didn't take long before one of the parents flew into the nest with a large rat and began feeding the babies! And as a bonus the owls were facing us. I decided to break out the camera and tripod (I didn't have a flash or flashlight with me) and photograph the entire meal, in spite of the fact that I had to use obscene ISOs in order to pull off the shots, but what an incredible thing to witness! I may try to add some off-camera flash in the next few days. I cloned out a branch and some bird droppings.

Canon 1Dx, 600 mm II, f/4, 1/200, ISO 20,000, manual exposure, tripod

[Karl Egressy]

It must have been a great experience to watch them feeding the babies. Nice action shot and the high ISO usage was a good idea, Doug.

[David Salem]

Not that bad at all for this ultra high ISO. I have seen images at ISO 1600-3200 that look noisyer than this one. Great look straight into the nest and I like the feeding display and the look of the baby on the left. Lucky you to find such a good vantage point of this GHO nest.
Can't wait to see some more with fill flash in a few days!! Nice work Doug

[Gabriela Plesea]

This is such a special image, Doug! Really enjoyed viewing this behavioural aspect you have captured!

Good detail despite very high ISO, nice PP work too - I am very taken with this, love owls, first time I see a capture of mom feeding babies and I just love the expression on the face of the little one on the LHS:)

Kindly post some more if you have, will look out for those images!

[arash_hazeghi]

this is in the territory of night vision!

looks good, send me the RAW file, curious what I can do with it. I have never tried this ISO before

best

[gail bisson]

Pretyy cool! Looking forward to more with some gentle off flash.
gail

[Alison McCoy]

Wonderful family shot. Congratulations on getting this even with the high ISO.

[shane shacaluga]

Nicely captured and nice work processing this extreme ISO

TFS

[Troy Lim]

Can't wait to see the one with off camera flash.

[Miguel Palaviccini]

What a neat scene to be able to witness, let alone capture!

[arash_hazeghi]

Doug sent me the RAW file and I worked on it in DPP. never worked with such high ISO...not too shabby

it is almost like night vision with such low light

[shane shacaluga]

I was waiting for this RP. Good work!

What does the original file look like with no PP

[Doug Brown]

Here's a downsized version of the unprocessed file.

[Doug Brown]

And here's a 100% RAW file crop. Fairly noisy at 100% but if you get your subject large in the frame, the noise is much less apparent in a downsized and processed version. You also need a solid exposure and good sharpness.

[shane shacaluga]

Thanks for that. Looks pretty good for that ISO


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Joe Subolefsky]

That had to be a cool encounter. Impressive for 20,000.5 years ago you would have had been lucky to tell the tree from the bird at those numbers.