Image Masters

This photo of Antelope Canyon was taken hand held at ISO 3200 with the Canon 1DsMk2. SHutter speed was 1/200 and aperture f.4.5  The lens used is the Canon 17-40mm f4

The location did not permit use of a tripod as I had to have my back to the canyon wall to take the photograph.   There simply was no way to take the photo except hand-held.  It was either hand held or no photo!  So I pushed the ISO to 3200 to get a good shutter speed (1/200) and make sure there was no camera shake. I could have used a slower speed but I played it safe.

Of course the image is noisy, although the 1DsMk2 does have some of the lowest noise levels.  So I used DxO Noise Engine to remove the noise.  I used high settings in DxO as far as noise removal was concerned.  The image shows no other noise removal besides what was done in DxO. 
Color & Contrast were also adjusted in DxO, with only a single layer adjustment done in Photoshop afterwards (curve + mask) to adjust the density of the highlight area on the right top side.
In this sense DxO made this image possible, in a way, at least as far as noise levels and image quality are concerned.