Hi Bob! I can understand your frustrations at getting a good shot of the Red Wing Blackbirds. They're fast, and they refuse to perch on anything stable! I lost an incredible number of shots, on Friday, just because they'd be in perfect focus, and by the time my brain told me to "fire" and I did, the wind had moved then 1 or 2 cm and the image was soft. Very frustrating. In the end, I took 90 shots ... and kept 4! I'd hate to pay the bill, for that kind of work with film! >I think it's time for me to look into capture and scanning gear that >better represents what was presented to them. 'Meantime, I guess >it's also time to get serious about researching noise-reduction >software in order to save a number of my present shots. I "develop", using Silkypix, to tiff files, and do any final tweaking, if needed, in PS. I then use Neat Image to reduce noise and convert to jpg. They have a freeware (Demo) version, which used to be fully functional, and without time limit, other than it would only save to jpg files. If you wanted to save to another .tiff, you had to buy the "pro" version. (I did... not expensive.) Don't know what their current plan is, but you can download the demo (still listed as freeware) at: http://www.neatimage.com/download.html I find it fast, easy to use and very effective. I do final resizing with either PS or FastStone Image Viewer. If I have a lot to do, I use FastStone Image Resizer, although it does not do as good a job (more artifacts than PS, by far), it's great for quick and dirty jobs. If I have to reduce, from say, 2400x3600 to 600x400, I'll make an intermediate copy at 1800x1200 pixels. The Resizer is so fast, that even with making an intermediate copy, and then reconverting that to the final size, I can process 500 files in about 4 minutes ... and the artifacts are much reduced by doing so. I then, of course, block delete the mid-sized files. FastStone stuff is good, and free ... and can be found at http://www.faststone.org/ I'm surprised at the amount of noise you say you're getting in the 20D... even at ISO 200. I had good results up to ISO 400 with the 20D and it seems good at ISO 800 with the 30D, although I'm trying to restrict myself to ISO 640. Like Doug, I try to underexpose 1 stop (when using RAW) and then correct as necessary, during development. This goes a long way to preventing blown highlights, and seems to help noise a wee bit, too. As for your flare problem ... that's a tough one to solve, no matter what software you're using. Good Luck! Cheers! --- David Young, Logan Lake, CANADA Wildlife Photographs: http://www.telyt.com/ Personal Web-pages: http://www3.telus.net/~telyt Stock Photography at: http://tinyurl.com/2amll4 ------ Unsubscribe or change to/from Digest Mode at: http://www3.telus.net/~telyt/lrflex.htm Archives are at: //www.freelists.org/archives/leicareflex/