Feb 26 2026 | By: Jim Zuckerman
This is a female red-legged honeycreeper I photographed in Costa Rica. The lighting was seriously reduced because the forest canopy was dense and blocked so much ambient light from reaching the forest floor. To achieve a fast shutter speed to freeze the wings, I had no choice but to raise the ISO to the unthinkable setting of 25,000. The original capture was very noisy, of course, and to make matters worse the bird was small in the frame. To make the image usable, I first cropped tightly on the bird and then used Topaz Gigapixel AI to increase the resolution. Then, I applied Topaz DeNoise AI twice until all the noise was gone. Finally, I used Topaz Sharpen AI to give the picture the quality I wanted. I used a 500mm f/4 Canon telephoto for the shot, and the settings were 1/2500, f/6.3, and 25,000 ISO.
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2 Comments
Feb 28, 2026, 1:16:15 PM
Donnette Largay - Perfection!!
Feb 26, 2026, 11:55:10 AM
Jim Steadman - Beautiful Capture. And thanks for the practical lesson in the use of the Topaz suite.