We had a long power outage a couple days ago during a rain and wind storm. I was amazed to see these Rufus Hummingbirds hovering and flying around in 80km hour winds like nothing was happening. This guy was visiting the feeder on our back deck so I grabbed the camera.
This is shot through a double pane glass door (too cold to leave the door open with no heat in the house) and a very dark day.
Nikon D3
Nikkor 600mm VR with 1.7X teleconverter (1000mm)
ISO 6400
1/200s @ f6.7
The D3 is a fairly recent aquisition for me and it just blew me away how good ISO6400 was. I didn't apply any PP noise reduction but there is sharpening, levels and I cloned out a small piece of feeder on the right side. Not a perfect image by any means but I'm so impressed by the high ISO performance I just had to post.
Hi Grant. I really like the composition and the wing blur! I do see noise, both in the bird and the BG. In my repost, I ran Noiseware Pro on the BG and the OOF portions of the bird (using Adobe CS3). As for the noise in the sharp areas of the bird, I left it as is. Noiseware Pro allows you to sharpen and NR with nice controls! Other noise reduction software will do this also but I am a fan of Noiseware! If you ran Noiseware on the birds body with some NR settings along with sharpening, I think you could reduce the noise in that area also.
Thanks Dave and Dan, yes there is definitely noise in the background and some on the bird itself, but considering the ISO I was surprised at how little. Dan, I really like the job Noiseware Pro did on the image, I'll definitely play around with NX2 and Photoshop to see if I can get it close to that.
Hopefully with the pair nesting in the backyard I can get some better light and clear shots (ie: no window) of them. They are very small as this image was not full frame and I was at just outside the min focusing distance. Maybe an extention tube or try the new 2X from Nikon.
Hi gRant - glad to see you are sorted and posting. Lots to like here - like the BG and the colours are very nice.
Have had the D3 myself and agree it is unsurpassed (cept for the D3S) for high ISO - results are great as long as you expose correctly.
Dont mind the blurred wings - a tad too much blur for my tastes - Do you have a flash unit or multiple flash units??
Linda robbins has a excellent book on how to setup for shooting these guys - available through Arties online store - www.birdsasart.com
For some reason this looks very contrasty to me on my monitor. Some of the whites seem blown, too. But it could all be the effect that you're after. Like the pose and the colors.
Thanks everyone for the comments...I pulled back the saturation and contrast (not sure if its enough) as well as applied the noise reduction and sharpening Dan talked about.
Very nice repost. Interesting how reducing the noise on the BG makes the bird look sharper. i don't mind the blurred wings but it would be nice if the tip of the bill was sharp. Probably not enough DOF I'm impressed this was done thru window
Rufus Hummingbird
