The Diving Arctic Tern

Photographed on Grimsey Island in Iceland last week. I took up a personal challenge trying to photograph these Arctic terns before they hit the water - certainly a fun experience doing this - helped immensely with the new mirrorless Nikon Z9 , like its counterparts, locking on

Specific Feedback Requested

High ISO used - 4000

This one is processed using DXO Raw and LR.

Thoughts on DXO vs Topaz DeN vs Nik DFine vs other ?

Technical Details

Z9 with 600 + TC 1:4

estimated 20% crop

2 Likes

Great action, Karl. The splash and the fish add a lot to the image and the wing position is perfect.

This looks ridiculously hard to do - congrats on a super shot. The splash frames the action so well and I love the translucency of the bird’s feathers. Wow. Nicely done.

Excellent! You were very fortunate to be able to catch one fishing and with the fish. Good job on the exposure and other technical attributes.

Great action shot, Karl! Excellent focus & detail (especially considering the crop). Catching them as they hit the water is quite a challenge as they flit about & dive so quickly. You caught this one perfectly! The only glitch is the overexposure on it’s tail but its pretty minor in light of everything else that went right.

1 Like

Thank you @_Kris , @David_Schoen , @Dennis_Plank , @Gary_Minish

No opinions on Noise reduction software ?

I can’t compare to DXO because I haven’t used it. I tried ON1 NoNoise and Topaz Denoise and went with Topaz because at the time I’d get some really weird pink pixels just splashed all over some images. I didn’t try DXO because it did some extra things like lens correction with each use that you couldn’t turn off. So far my experience with Topaz has been fine although sometimes the software acts unpredictably - such as missing splotches of noise in some areas of a photo by using one mode and another mode cleans them up perfectly.

Wonderful action shot Karl. These guys are so fast that you almost need one of the newer cameras to capture them like this. I love the splashing water, the prey in the beak and even the lighting, while not soft, is certainly not harsh. So easy to blow the whites out on these and you did good to control that.
I have only used Topaz so I can’t compare but for the most part it works as intended. Sometimes it gets a little bit wonky so always zoom in and check details throughout your frame but I highly recommend it.

Thanks @_Kris - Will try Topaz DeN too and compare the 2

Thanks for the feedback @David_Haynes

I will try Topaz deN - heard good things - but those that use DXO RAW - swear by it - a bit pricy though $129 vs $60 for Topaz DeN