This picture of a Masked Trogon was taken at Sachamatia Lodge outside of Mindo, Ecuador. The lodge has a moth blind (a piece of white canvas stretched between two poles with light shining on it that stays on all night). Early in the morning (in just barely gray light) many birds come to eat the moths that have collected all night. This is one of those birds. This image was taken with a Canon R5, 600 mm II lens off a tripod. SS was 1/6 second (not a typo), f/5.6 (a mistake on my part-should have been f/4.0) and ISO of 10,000. Processed in DXO Pure Raw, edited in PS (small crop from L and bottom), a piece of wire was cloned out on L and the BG was brought down slightly. Finally it was run through Topaz DeNoise AI at Low Light settings. Would never have dreamed of this shot 5 years ago with my first 70D Canon camera. I debated removing the grapes on the L and the specular highlights but decided to leave it alone. Ideally this shot would have been taken with a 400 or 500 mm lens, but alas, do not have one.
Lovely image James just wish for better Ha where more of the bill was in focus. Perch set ups are difficult to get to look natural. Don't care for the grapes but if you get rid of them. Just a bird on a stick may look worse.TFS
Kevin, Thank you for looking. Yes, I agree with you about this being an image with somewhat limited potential. Apparently this bird was waiting for the light; he flew onto this spot and did not move for several minutes. If he was .5 meters to the right it would have provided a much better image. I was also expecting a much longer bird to come and hence was in portrait mode which limited my crop choices later. This was the only image, out of a burst of about 50, that was reasonably sharp. Will be processing other images, of other birds, from this same morning later and will see if any of those came out more "natural" appearing.
You did as well as you could have under the circumstances. When light is limiting, getting sharp images with maximum DOF is really, really hard, even with a tripod. I agree - the grapes need to go.
I have recropped (8x10), brought down the blacks on the neck and face, and cloned out bright spot and grapes. Kinda of a funky job on the grapes and like Kevin said, "bird on a stick", but at least it is a different approach.
I prefer the original crop, but agree the grapes needed to go - as well as the bright spot in ULC. Nice colours on the subject. Looks good overall for 1/6s.
A truly low light shot
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