Black-capped Chickadee (ISO 2500!)

Sorry for the lack of posting on here for the past month or so. I recently seriously upgraded my primary camera to a Canon 1D Mark III from my previous 40D. I have a tendency to become obsessed with a new piece of equipment randomly, and decided to step it up and buy a professional camera body. I ended up selling my 40D along with my 70-200 f4L to fund assist in the funds, as I haven't been using my 70-200 lately. I plan on upgrading to the IS version or possibly buy a used 180 f3.5L macro by the end of the summer.

Anyways, the I am absolutely thrilled with my new camera. I was cautious not to buy the 1D3 after the previous autofocus issues, but was able to find a great deal on a blue dot version. I love the look and feel of the camera, it's incredibly solid and durable; much better than the 40D and 20D I was used to for years. The autofocus is also incredible, although I have not been able to test it on any birds in flight yet. Being able to autofocus with my 400 f5.6L and 1.4x teleconverter is an awesome change, as well. I use the TC about 80% of the time, and was used to manual focusing with my older bodies. This will allow me to have more opportunities especially with fast moving subjects like warblers. By far the best improvement with the 1D Mark III is the high ISO performance. It is incredible. I wanted to post a much bigger image than I usually use for web viewing just to show the detail at ISO 2500. This is with noise reduction set to "High" using Breezebrowser Pro. In Photoshop I did minimal contrast and color adjustment, along with selective sharpening. I am hoping to get out to the coast one of these days I have off, as there are not many willing subjects in central MA as of right now. Spring cannot come soon enough!