Junco 12-23

I like the sharpness, HA, and BG on this. I would be curious to see the histogram if you had "0" comp. I have a 50D also and I am with you about the noise on that camera especially over 400 (I use the noiseware plugin). You might consider lightening up the shadowed area a little bit and if it were mine, I would clone out the white seeds on the perch and maybe move the bird to the right a little so it's not so centered. Solid capture.

Very cute bird you got there.

Very nice Junco, Bruce. I find these birds to be very photogenic. Beautiful detail on the head, where it counts. My policy on winter shots in the dark Northwest is to go with the highest iso my camera will allow with acceptable noise (about iso 800 on the 40D, though I prefer 640), and trade off shutter speed and dof as best I can. Perching birds can sometimes give you surprisingly good results down to 1/30 or so. You might look at after market noise reduction software. Some of it works better than the Photoshop stuff.

Bruce,

Your settings seem to have worked out very nicely for this image, I like the head turn, details and pose of the junco a lot.

I go along with Brian's comments on this one Bruce. I have a 50D and I use NeatImage Plug In to help with noise in the BGs.

One thing that is key is that at higher iso's you really need to get the exposure right in camera. If you try to use too fast a shutter speed and underexpose, lightening the photo later in PS will introduce a lot of noise. This one looks pretty darn good.

Wonderful detail and sharpness at 1/60! Nice head turn too

cheers
Rob

I shoot the same combo and have the same trouble...getting it right in camera helps a lot, and I also will purposely overexpose sometimes. Noise is always worse during processing when trying to lighten a photo, but is usually ok when darkening up to a stop. That being said...anything over 640 really isn't worth the shot.
You did a nice job here...the bird really pops at you, so the small amount of noise you have doesn't bother me. Shaorn

Wow, I would say pretty good with that slow ss. It looks pretty sharp to me. That's what the tripod is for and I believe makes it worth luggin around

Nice shot Bruce. Very dramatic choice of comp and background. I too use the 100-400 combination with a 40D and find that I cannot shoot even at 400 without the picture breaking up completely... much worse with a plain blue background. I've tried with the in-camera noise reduction settings (in custom functions) with no better results. I've resorted to selecting the areas I want in focus, inverting, and using the blur function in CS3. Not the ultimate solution, but saved a few using it. Canon really should get its act together.