I captured this keel-billed toucan in flight during one of my Costa Rica photo tours. In the past, when grain/noise was the inhibiting factor in choosing camera settings, it wasn't possible to have a super fast shutter plus depth of field or else you'd risk lowering the quality of the image due to increased noise. Now, with modern mirrorless cameras, DXO processing, and software like Topaz DeNoise and Neat Image, noise is much less of a problem. My settings for this shot were 1/4000, f/9, and 3200 ISO. Shutter speed is everything when it comes to rendering birds in flight with tack sharp clarity. When I was in Bosque del Apache last week, I hadn't noticed my shutter speed had inadvertently slipped to 1/500 of a second for about an hour. I didn't keep any of the pictures of the birds because they weren't sharp. I know it seems counter intuitive that a small fraction like 1/500th can't freeze a flying bird, but it can't. This is true particularly at the wing tips. Flying birds require at least 1/3200th of a second to be sharp, and if the birds are small with a rapid wing beat, 1/4000 is minimum. I hand held the camera and lens for this shot, and I used a 100-400mm telephoto.
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