Turns out this is a common problem and there are plenty of tools that provide much better noise reduction than Lightroom while maintaining the details. When turned up high enough to remove the noise, it also removes much of the detail and starts to border on a watercolor painting. Lightroom has it but it is terrible at any level above the default. So what do I need? I need noise reduction. Lightroom obliterates the detail with its noise reduction. The image on the left is detailed, but noisy. The framing is good and the bird is large enough, but the noise is very visible. Even that was underexposed, requiring a +1 stop exposure bump in post, giving me the equivalent of an ISO 6400 image and all the noise that comes with it.

Taken at 550mm, I needed ISO 3200 to expose for a minimum 1/640 shutter speed at f/8 on my D500. The image above is a good example of a typical bird photo. Images at ISO 5,000 and 10,000 are common, which destroys detail and color even on my D750.įull image above and 100% crop below. Doing this requires increasing the ISO to gather enough light to expose the image but adds additional noise to the image. In my post about improving my bird photos, I talked about increasing shutter speed and stopping down my lens to improve sharpness.

Dxo pure raw test