Wet western Waxwing!

[Dan Brown]

We are having a pretty good storm here in CA right now and this poor little guy is taking the brunt of it, hunkered down in my backyard! No light, hence the high ISO. I did some heavy NR on this!

Camera Model: NIKON D300, handheld
Shutter speed: 1/250 sec
Aperture: 5.6
Exposure mode: Manual
Flash: On, TTL fill -1.0, better beamer
Metering mode: Multi-segment
ISO: 3200
Lens: 80 to 400mm
Focal length: 400mm

[Vivek Khanzode]

Dan

Thanks for sharing. I have not seen this bird.

I would crop out the leaves on the left side; those are distracting. I would also apply some selective HEAVY NR to the bg to remove the obvious noise.

-- V

[Harshad Barve]

Dan , what a cool bird , first time for me
agreed with Vivek here
TFS

[Doug Brown]

I would barely recognize this as a Waxwing save for a couple of splashes of color. In addition to NR I would move the bird to the left of the frame and maybe crop a little tighter.

[James Prudente]

That is one wet young of the year Cedar Waxwing. Hope it doesn't get hypothermic.

Jim

[Dan Brown]

Thanks for looking guys. Here's a repost with suggestions applied. The image is ugly and kinda hopeless (IMO) but interesting. I reduced noise some more and sharpened with IntellisharpenII, which does an edge mask. This seemed to improve the uglyness!!