Early last year the resident village fox made a daytime visit to my garden. My camera was at hand as I was photographing my daughter in the melting snow earlier in the day. Excitingly I grabbed the camera and did my best to get some shots without scaring him away.

It was a dull February afternoon, light conditions were not great. The fox was at a distance and my lens wasn’t any kind of telezoom. I was taking the shoots from indoors and had a static window position. In vain, I felt, I collected a few shorts and later discarded them as too noisy.

It’s a year later and I have started revisiting some of my unused and unloved shots. With the introduction of AI to Lightroom in the form of noise reduction I decided to have another go at editing the fox. I was blown away at just how far the technology has come. The ability to remove noise with very limited penalty to the detail of the image is a game changer for budget telephotography enthusiasts and hobbyists.

Not just limited to Lightrrom. I have friends who use Topaz and I was aware of benefits but just not the level of these benefits. Wildlife is just one useful scenario, I can think of many more such as indoor events where lighting is uncontrollable.