checking out Topaz Deoise

[Boo53]

I went up to the Tahbilk wetlands one night last week, pre lockdown, to have another attempt to get a passable shot of the resident Azure Kingfisher.

Where I expected to see it would be in heavy shadow but with a bright background so my settings were shutter priority at 1/500 with the Sony 100-400 at 400 on a 1.4 tc. With the TC the max aperture is f8.ISO set to auto. Exposure compensation at +.3.

Just as I was getting to where I thought the bird would be a local was going the other way walking her dog, so if it had been there it wasn't now.

Not to waste my trip I thought I'd fire off a few shots which were bound to be noisey, and see how the latest Topaz Denoise handled it.

Shot off a few of this spoonbill but forgot to turn down the exposure compensation so the highlights are a bit blown and ISO is 10,000.

First shot is the uncropped doc, second is cropped unprocessed and the final is "denoised".

Topaz has done a reasonable job, but I must say I was surprised how little noise there was at ISO 10,000.

A friend mentioned during a talk at a local camera club last month that he uses auto ISO and utilises Topaz DeNoise after that for his (excellent) bird shots.

I've been using Topaz products for a long time and there's been a big improvement in Denise in the last few iterations.

Their sharpening product is also very good although I haven't used it here

untitled shoot-057 by boo 53, on Flickr

untitled shoot-057-2 by boo 53, on Flickr

untitled shoot-057-3 by boo 53, on Flickr

[John Humpo]

Gee I think it works really well, going on that very noisy 2nd image to the last is some job, along with being a pretty severe crop.