In the early morning the hornbills came to feed on the figs in the trees right outside our tent. The light was low and would require ISO1600 to get a decent shutter speed. With the 50D on the lens I had my doubts after all the negative comments about this camera. Changing to the 1DmkIII would take too long, the birds will be gone in a few minutes. 50D it is then and I took a couple of shoots using live view.

This shoot was slightly overexposed because the light was improving quickly and I was using manual settings. When developing the RAW file I was surprised (and thrilled) to see how well this capture came out. Sure there is noise but there is also details. I was able to do quite some post processing without the image breaking apart. There is no additional noise reduction made here apart from the in-camera NR, just some level adjustments and sharpening of the bird itself.

My conclusion is that I should not be afraid to use ISO1600 if I have too, but important to get a good exposure (ie not underexposed). See the next image for a 100% crop.