The lighting was a bit lower than what would be ideal, as the sun was going down. Viewed at 100%, it does not look great, but sometimes, you have to take what you can get! (Looks great at this size!)
Handheld.
Although, I did make several attempts, most of which had more blur. Between Super Steady Shot and multiple tries, I eventually got something surprisingly sharp.
Processed from RAW.
The heron was captured as the sun was setting behind the trees, and behind a neighbor's house, making this a much-less-than-ideal lighting condition. I ran noise reduction and PF removal (which wasn't too noticeable anyway, at this size), and cropped and reduced the size for the web. This is an example of a photo which might look too poor or grainy at 100% pixel view, but is perfectly acceptable for web or small prints.
The moral of the story: before giving up on a photo, you might salvage something with some post-processing, or find that it's not objectionable as long as you do not print large.
Things look better at f8. I didn't need to do much processing on this one.
