High ISO pre and post processing comparison

[Uncle Kevriano]

I was just going through some recent shots from our local Zoo and noticed that this shot was at 20000 ISO, as I have removed my 10k upper limit as an experiment. To be honest, I was surprised at the general noise level in the original. Correct exposure has always been a big part of reducing that noise, especially on the RIV, and this has highlighted that, because the noise there really isn't too bad. It has, of course, lost fine feather details, but this was shot in an indoor tropical house, with not the best lighting, so that is expected.
Processing was jst a bit of dehaze in Camera RAW and then Topaz Denoise set on Severe Noise - Auto..
The subject is a Chestnut Backed Thrush,

• ILCE-7RM4
• FE 200-600mm F5.6-6.3 G OSS
• 362.0 mm
• ƒ/7.1
• 1/800 sec
• ISO 20000

• ILCE-7RM4
• FE 200-600mm F5.6-6.3 G OSS
• 362.0 mm
• ƒ/7.1
• 1/800 sec
• ISO 20000

 

[Brownie]

Not bad for ISO 20000. Obvious smoothing and loss of detail, but to be expected. Did you ever download the DXO free trial and give it a spin? This would be a perfect shot to compare the two.

 

[Astacus]

Did you try Topaz STD noise? Some of the severe settings can be aggressive. I must admit to keeping to <3200, 6400 at a push. It's a pretty good images, and might look even better if downsized a bit?

My workflow: Denoise, Subject masking, dehaze (a tiny bit), maybe a bit of texture, then a subject-centred Topaz Sharpen - here different settings give hugely different results.

 

[Paul stuart]

it has cleaned up well but with the loss of feather detail which is a trait of denoise what ever the processing software used .had you not of told me i would of never of guessed iso20,000 ,but those tropical houses are a bain for low light and condensation,i have started to like leaving a bit of grain in my images it looks more natural to me