Worries about Nikkor 100-400 S Alleviated

[CoyoteCreationsNW]

I was concerned about getting good backgrounds with the limited aperture of this lens. Had a chance to shoot this from my car window today. Background didn't come out too bad but feather detail is less than I expected. Comments or suggestions to improve?

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[Woody Meristem]

Looks good to me. If it was distant and you cropped to get a closer view you'll almost always lose some fine detail, especially if you de-noise. With that ISO, I assume you used a de-noise software.

 

[JamesFarrell]

Jim: Was wondering if you would have shot this at a little wider aperture and not as much positive exposre compensation your ISO might not have been as high. That might have ‘robbed’ a little detail. That said, nice shot.

 

[EricBowles]

This probably belongs in the critique forum.

I'm assuming you shot through an open window with the engine off. Shooting through glass or with the engine running can cost you detail. Auto glass is awful.

The light you are shooting in does not provide much direction. That suggests detail is hard to render.

I'd edit with selection layers in LR Classic.
You can darken the background by 1-1.5 stops. I'd increase saturation and drop Luminance of the Blue channel in the HSL panel.
For the subject, you can increase Clarity to give it more contrast, and increase Texture to bring out some feather detail. It looks sharp.
If you really want to push feather texture, you can use Topaz - probably Photo AI would be my starting point. Don't add sharpening, NR, texture or clarity before going to Topaz if you are using an edited version. Also try with a Raw file as a first step, and then finish the edits in LR after Topaz.
Any noise reduction comes at the expense of subject detail, so use noise reduction lightly in all the editors.

Next time, before I use ISO 7200, I'd drop the aperture and shoot wide open rather than f/8. You could have picked up a full stop and reduced ISO to 3600 or 3200 at f/5.6. That would have provided more detail because Noise Reduction could be lower. I think the exposure is fine with the Exposure Comp selected.

 

[CoyoteCreationsNW]

Looks good to me. If it was distant and you cropped to get a closer view you'll almost always lose some fine detail, especially if you de-noise. With that ISO, I assume you used a de-noise software.

I did run it through Topaz Denoise but pretty lightly and it was a very minor crop so noise was not bad.

 

[CoyoteCreationsNW]

Jim: Was wondering if you would have shot this at a little wider aperture and not as much positive exposre compensation your ISO might not have been as high. That might have ‘robbed’ a little detail. That said, nice shot.

I agree. The "experiment" for that outing was what kind of subject isolation and background appearance could I get at more closed f/stops with this lens. As long as the background was sky or very distant it turned out better than expected.

 

[CoyoteCreationsNW]

This probably belongs in the critique forum.

I'm assuming you shot through an open window with the engine off. Shooting through glass or with the engine running can cost you detail. Auto glass is awful.

The light you are shooting in does not provide much direction. That suggests detail is hard to render.

I'd edit with selection layers in LR Classic.
You can darken the background by 1-1.5 stops. I'd increase saturation and drop Luminance of the Blue channel in the HSL panel.
For the subject, you can increase Clarity to give it more contrast, and increase Texture to bring out some feather detail. It looks sharp.
If you really want to push feather texture, you can use Topaz - probably Photo AI would be my starting point. Don't add sharpening, NR, texture or clarity before going to Topaz if you are using an edited version. Also try with a Raw file as a first step, and then finish the edits in LR after Topaz.
Any noise reduction comes at the expense of subject detail, so use noise reduction lightly in all the editors.

Next time, before I use ISO 7200, I'd drop the aperture and shoot wide open rather than f/8. You could have picked up a full stop and reduced ISO to 3600 or 3200 at f/5.6. That would have provided more detail because Noise Reduction could be lower. I think the exposure is fine with the Exposure Comp selected.

You are correct that it was a hazy overcast day with very flat lighting. Yes sedttings could have been optimized. I was sitting in my car waiting for circling hawks to come down and taking some landscape images across a pond when this owl landed 30 feet or so away. A few quick shots and as I started to adjust setting, no more owl. I need more time for "muscle memory" to take hold on my Z9.