Northern Mockingbird

[Rich Reich]

I captured this Northern Mockingbird image late in the day yesterday at the Corkscrew Swamp Santuary in Naples, FL. With fading light I shot this set at ISO 1600 and processed through noise reduction. I was pleased with the head angle of the capture.

Nikon D300s
ISO 1600
1/500s @ f/6.3
Equivalent focal length 450mm
Aperature Priority

Comments are appreciated.

Rich

[Randy Stout]

Rich:

You have controlled the noise from that ISO pretty well. Still some showing up on darker areas of background. I do think that there has been some loss of fine detail in the bird. Did you run the NR on the entire image, or just the background?

The cluttered background is a challenge for this image, esp. the stick behind his back, and the couple in front of beak. You might be able to tone them down a bit.

Did you have the option of going to a larger aperture to decrease the DOF?

Nice headangle.

Cheers

Randy

[Rich Reich]

Randy,

I did run the noise reduction on the entire image. When I compare the before and after there is some small reduction of fine detail in the noise reduced image. I used Noise Ninja for noise reduction and have not yet tried to use selective noise reduction. Noise Ninja does have a Noise Brush that allows you to selectively undo noise reduction.

This image was shot at f/6.3 and I did have the option to open up to f/5.6. That would have improved the blur of the background somewhat. Having the bird very close to the twigs and branches did create a challenge for DOF.

Thanks for the suggestions. They would clearly improve the image.

Rich

[Arthur Morris]

The bird is sharp and the head angle is decent. The steep angle to the bird and the barrage of sticks and branches in the BKGR detract.

[Marina Scarr]

Unfortunately, the background in this image doesn't lend itself to showing off your bird. It may be helpful to select the bird, inverse and do some NR on the BG only. That way you won't lose details in the bird.