more woodpecker photos! something interesting for pixel peepers, too....
the light was nice this morning so i got some more shots of the lineated woodpecker working on the nest. i didn't want to drag the tripod out there so i shot handheld at 1/800 with the 500mm prime lens on the Z8. the image quality was surprisingly good at ISO 1800 and 2000 but tomorrow i'll take the tripod out and shoot at 1/400 if i have the same light....getting the ISO under 1000 should really yield some killer shots. anyway, other than noise the image quality looked good and i ran a couple images through adobe AI denoise and took a little more time with processing. also, i don't like to crop heavily, but in this case, to really see the detail in the bird, i cropped away about 2/3 of the images. here are the shots i processed:
for pixel peepers like me, check out the image quality, detail and lack of noise even zoomed in at around 200%:
see, this is why i wish andy were here....he'd be all into this.
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I'm especially fond of woodpeckers. 
Your photos are absolutely perfect! So beautiful. Incredibly detailed.
...technically it's a pro lens but it's not a $10k or $15k lens.
i'm still learning how to use all the new AI tech and now, after pixel peeping at 500% zooms of very sharp images of mine, i realize that the high pass filter step at the end of my workflow is doing more harm than good....not only does it seem to not be needed but it's oversharpening and adding artifacts that you don't necessarily see at 100% or 200% but negatively affect the overall image quality and it's apparent when comparing it to the same photo w/o the high pass filter layer, even at 50% zoom.
here's something you'll like (and andy would have gotten into this, as well...he was a master topaz user)....left image with manual NR done in cameraRAW and the right with AI NR in cameraRAW....no high pass filter on either. this image was shot today at ISO 280 and didn't have a noise problem, but viewed at 450% zoom you can see that the color red must create noise more than other colors. all areas of the crop have sharper detail on the right, but look at the detail in the red crest.....you can see it on the left but its noisy....look how clean the detail has been restored on the right by AI NR!
