Nature Photo taking with T6s

[jameswingert]

I just screwed myself out of a possible nice shot because I realize I'm so still a novice not an intermediate like I thought.  I'm shooting with a T6s EF S 18-135mm STM,  I saw a coyote tonight with a rabbit in his mouth.  Shooting conditions were this: Full Night. Good amount of ambient light from the many parking lot lights around.  Low cloud ceiling reflecting light and snow on the ground.  I'm just not happy with my shots, too grainy from high ISO 12800, too dark from bad choices on aperture and shutter speed 1/60 at f/5.6 but really anything around there isn't giving me light I want.  And shutter speed too slow to still movement.  with the light conditions I describe does a setting jump out at anybody that they would use in that situation...??

[ebiggs1]

This is one answer ....

"You can get the Canon EF 135mm f/2L USM Lens and instantly improve your chances.  It is three stops faster right off the bat."

Your current lens is just way too slow for what you seek.  Beside the obvious noise introduced with a higher ISO, you also need to think about 'Dynamic Range' (DR).  You are well beyond your camera's DR when you have the white highlights in the background.

Remember shoot RAW.  Recoverable data is more likely in under exposure than in blown out.  If you can see yourself getting Photoshop and ACR9, you will have better RAW processing ability.

[TCampbell]

Most of the points have been covered... but you can reduce the amount of noise using software.  

If you use Lightroom, it has a decent noise-reduction control.  If you use Photoshop, you can get a plug-in called "Noiseware Pro".  

Noise reduction isn't a mircale... it comes with a trade-off in that it averages out the pixel values to reduce noise, but this has the side-effect of softening the image (it wont look quite as sharp.)

Better to have a higher ISO so you can shoot at a higher shutter speed and get noise, then to use a lower ISO and have to shoot at a lower shutter speed, not get noise, but get blur.  This is because you can do something about the noise in post processing, but there's really not much you can do about the blur.

The shooting conditions were too challenging (an experienced photographer would have had problems in those conditions).  So don't beat yourself up too much.

[jameswingert]

TCampbell-  Thanks so much for the great words.  It's great to hear all of youz thoughts and comments.  Here's some of what I got, about five shots total.  I'd be willing to go with a softer image for any noise reduction.  I've tried in LR but it doesn'tget close to where I want to be.