Balancing Exposure in Low Light

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CoyoteCreationsNW

CoyoteCreationsNW

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Early morning light. 1/800 sec because that is all I can comfortably hand hold the 400 TC, F/4 to get more of the body in focus. This forced ISO to 8000. I lost a lot of fur detail cleaning up color noise in Denoise AI. Thoughts on other settings that might have given a better balance? or is this a shot I should have just passed. There was no time to try alternate settings as he headed into the brush and disappeared.
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You over exposed by one stop, I noticed. Personally I would not do that in low light unless my subject was the darkest part of the frame. The camera already exposes to make the photo look like daylight, I.e., brighter than the scene is at twilight. Dropping the +1 compensation gets you to ISO 4000, and you lighten selectively in post processing. That minimises noise in the entire image; if you push it in post you’ll increase noise but only selectively.
 
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I have to agree with the other comments; I'd go 1/2 stop to a stop darker; I'd even consider going 1/2 stop darker on the deer and a full stop darker on the deep green background. I like the image, and I think the noise was handled well.
 
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That's a very nice shot.
I agree with previous commentators about exposure.
About white balance, I am not sure. I am watching on a crappy screen, but maybe it could be a little bit warmer.
 
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Thanks for the comments. The deer is already a little more grey than he looked, likely due to less dynamic range at higher ISO. I tried a curves adjustment to bring down the whites and highlights and actually open some of the darker shadows. This certainly gives better subject separation but the loss of fur detail to color noise could not really be improved much. I did move color to a little more red and yellow.
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