Thank you for the kind words. I handhold this outfit for about 30 seconds at a time.

Agree. See my reply to Paul.

Absolutely agree with you about some serious flaws with this image. In general, I will only process a shot like this if there is some factor (unique bird, unique setting, unique behavior, etc) that helps to mitigate the focus, noise, BG, etc. This image would never go into my "best" folder, but will go into my Birds of Panama folder. 3 star at best but it is the only one I have of this species.

I usually do not process or keep "portrait" type images, but occasionally if I have only one flawed, but maybe salvageable image of a species, I might try to make the save. This is one of those. This is a Great Tinamou, a large, but very secretive bird of Central America rainforests. They have been hunted for a long time and have become very wary in most places. You often hear them at dawn, before the sun rises, but you do not see them often. I saw this one only briefly and had only a fleeting moment to shoot. I was using way too lens (840 mm) and was hand holding so the shot was marginal. Instead of trashing it, I cropped down to the following head shot. Shot with Canon R5, 600 mm f/4.0 + 1.4x extender, handheld at f/5.6, SS 1/320. ISO 10,000. Processed in PS after conversion in DXO Pure Raw 3, and passed through Topaz De Noise prior to conversion to JPEG.

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Thank you. Not sure I agree with your thought; for me it depends on the setting. In this case, it was amazing this bird came out into a clearing about 3' in diameter. Otherwise it would have been a tangled mess of vines and sticks. With that type of BG, even when OOF, it is distracting to me.

Streak-chested Antpitta. Antpittas are a widespread family of birds in Central and South America. They can fly, but prefer to stay on the ground. They are most comfortable in very dark surroundings and are most active about 1 hour before dawn and 1 hour after dusk. You can hear them all around you, but they are tough to see.

Absolutely not. I guess that is why Canon is so willing to introduce these zooms that are relatively slow.

Thanks for that. I was pleased; I no longer even think about sacrificing shutter speed for ISO.

You need to go to Panama next.

Thanks for that. Just in my short photography career (less than 15 years) the strides have been amazing.

It still amazes me when I see my AutoISO head upwards of 12,800, but I still push the shutter button.

Thank you. Wonderful subjects and local for taking images.

With modern cameras and probably more importantly, modern post processing software, ISO values that I would have never dreamed of in the past can produce more than just "keeper" images but rather good ones. I like this one and feel that it shows good color and detail rendition. This is a Streak-chested Antpitta, shot in the rain forest of Panama. This was early in the morning (when these birds are active), and deep in the undercover. The RAW file was converted in DXO Pure RAW 3, processed in PS (BG down, bird up in brightness and saturation) and finally run through Topaz De Noise at very low settings (noise reduction at 8 and sharpness at 10) prior to JPEG conversion. Shot with a Canon R5, 600 f4.0, SS 1/800, f/4.0, ISO 16,000, handheld.

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