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I was slowly driving around one of our local wildlife refuges (Merced) when I came upon this Merlin (the third one I’ve ever spotted!) busily plucking a bird kill and pretty much ignoring me. It let me shoot it to my heart’s content. When I finally drove away, it was still plucking away. D500, Nikon 200-500 lens, Nikon 1.4 TC, hand held, cropped to 3200 x 1696, 1/3200th, 700mm, ISO 1100, AI Clear.
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A beautiful bird and pose, Dave. I suspect it’s an artifact of the AI Clear software, but the bird and perch both looks strange in the larger images. There’s some fine detail in a few places (such as parts of the near wing and tail), but it looks very grainy there and the rest of the bird and perch look like all the really fine detail (feather barbs) is missing and with this close an image I would expect to see that kind of detail.
It’s a wonderful image and a great find-I’ve seen these about the same number of times as you have and never gotten this close.
I would reprocess this one as it has lots of potential. I find that Topaz noise suppression software works best after bringing up shadows in Lightroom. I sharpen after exporting to Photoshop. Sometimes, you need to try different ways of processing in order to reduce artifact production. Great pose with an excellent background…Jim
Thanks for the suggestion, Jim. I will give it a try.
A really good looking image. Nice pose and a good catch with the kill. Hopefully the reprocessing works out. There seems to be lots of fine detail hidden away somewhere.
A super find and great pose Dave. The lack of feather detail on the head is the biggest issue. If you applied noise reduction to the whole image it could be the cause. With the file size and settings etc I would think the detail is there if reprocessed. After you downsize for web, just sharpen the bird.
I am SOOO jealous! This is a gorgeous catch that will profit from a redo on processing. If I understand correctly, AI Clear is an older product that has been supplanted by DeNoise AI and Sharpen AI. I have found Denoise does not do its best when noise is uneven, so when noise is an issue, I now do what I never thought I would – I make absolutely minimal tonal adjustments in raw conversion and do DeNoise AI the first step in PS. (In most cases I turn off the sharpening slider and sharpen later.) I scroll around at 100% looking for how Denoise handles various areas and may do 2 layers with different settings and mask. Then, if I masked, do a composite layer and do the Camera Raw filter on it. I don’t have the tonal overhead of the raw file, but I do have a clean file, and lightening the drk areas brings out much less noise. And of course I’m always going to PS with a 16-bit image.
Then clone, and then consider any sharpening, also with possibly two different layers with masking.
