Great perch and composition....It looks a little soft and/or noisy to me. I'm not too handy w/ PS skills so maybe someone else will have a thought on this.
Thanks for your comment, Dan. It is a bit soft - part of my cronic noise problem shooting at high ISOs. Here is the shot that has not been run though a noise filter. The bird is a bit sharper but the background is a little noisier.
Terry
I took a few minutes with this, had to run the noise reduction program 3 times!!!! I use to sharpening on it, btw.
Then sharpened selectively, just the bird and erased the rest, including the bird's body.
Cropped and cleaned the leaves a bit. This may or may not be OK with your ethics, just done for illustrative purposes only.
Fab's post looks a lot better. I am surprised that a 400D would have so much noise at ISO 800. FWIW I use Noise ninja and mostly apply with the selective brush to avoid blurring the subject.. RE the image itself I like the comp ad color a lot. Gold Finches are among my favorite.
Thanks Fabs for your efforts. Your edits are well within my ethics. I appreciate the input. Thanks also to you, Ed for your info. I will look into getting the Noise ninja. Probably the most common comment I get is regarding noise - so obviously its something I need to work on.
And thanks also to you John for your comment!
Terry
Thanks, Del, for your comment. I normally do very little editing, so the blurring the background is new to me. Living in the Seattle area, our light is often very dim, so shooting at high ISOs and then cropping does create noise. Probably because I am used to it, it doesn't bother me.
Terry