Fly-by-Night

[Bill Dix]

I've envied the posts from across the pond, of Short-eared Owls in daylight (by Eric, Jonathan, Frank and others). Unfortunately, if we are lucky to have a year when they show up at all, they only begin flying when it gets dark. Nighttime BIF is not my forte. But on a tip that there were some Owls about last week, I gave it a try, figuring it was an opportunity to push the envelope. I had a number of fly-bys in the dusk and dark, and kept trying to find a setting that exposed to the right, but I underexposed them all. My next attempt would have been even more ISO and flash power, but it got so dark I couldn't see the birds at all. So this attempt is my best effort to find a compromise between noise and detail. In thinking about it after the fact, there are some other things I might have tried, such as 50% or 100% flash rather than TTL, with a 1/500s shutter speed, or less. I guess that in the dark it is the flash that stops the action, not the SS. But even if successful it would have given me a totally flashed look which I didn't really want. If anyone has any suggestions I would love to hear them. If the Owls stick around I'll try again; maybe they'll come out to play a little earlier next time. In the meantime I'll start eating carrots.

D500, 500f4 + 1.4 TC, ISO 10,000, 1/1250s @ f/5.6 manual. TTL @ -0.3.

[Randy Stout]

Bill:

I find it a very effective photo, like the 'mood', composition, wings up. Yes ,the IQ suffers from the ISO.

Were you using a better beamer on the flash?

Can you elaborate on your post processing? Any gradients, etc?

Cheers

Randy

[Bill Dix]

Thanks Randy. Yes, I used a Beamer with the Speedlight. Another issue with night flight shots is that the flash doesn't fire on every frame of a burst because of the recycle time. It did fire here judging by what it did to the eyes of the bird, but maybe not at full strength.

I opened the image in Capture NX-D where I increased the exposure by one full stop, and applied some NR. Then to Photoshop where I adjusted the color balance to warm it up (should have done in NX-D instead); brightened the bird further with Brightness and Levels; repaired the flashed-out eyes; ran a heavy dose of Topaz NR on the background and a lighter dose on the bird, and some selective Topaz Detail. I ran through several iterations and don't remember everything I did to this version, but probably adjusted Saturation and Contrast on the bird. No Gradients. There was grass in the foreground partially lit by the flash, then a mowed field in the middle distance, and then dark forest behind that. Cropped to about 60% of full-width. Resized to BPN web size and sharpened.

[Randy Stout]

Thanks for the data Bill. I wondered about the gradient because of the dark line in frame, but your description covers it.

I often used the variable power of multiple flash exposures in a row to give me a pseudo bracketing effect on the flash. Often would find one in the series that had the best flash/background balance.

Cheers

Randy

[Tony Ardillo]

That pose is simply awesome Bill! I don't care about the ISO, as the image is captivating! Fellow Rush fan?

[arash_hazeghi]

His Bill, this one is too noisy and soft for me. not a keeper in my book, the IQ is just not there and unfortunately no amount of processing would produce a suable image at ISO 10,000 out out of small sensor camera like D500.

best

[dankearl]

A noble and worthwhile effort. For web presentation this looks fine. A excellent pose.

[Satish Ranadive]

Excellent flight shot. Beautiful wing position, colors and details. Love the eyes.

Regards,
Satish.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Bill a very difficult subject in these conditions, a valiant effort but I think the conditions were rather stacked against you. I strongly suspect the Topaz detail has introduced a good deal of extra noise on the bird, it may be worthwhile seeing if the quality is better without. You could always use curves on a separate layer to enhance the contrast and detail if you felt some additional processing was required. The other thing to consider is reducing the crop to help minimise the noise, I do think however you will still be stuck with more noise than desirable.

[Bill Dix]

Thank you all for commenting.