An Iris.

[Fovea]

High ISO, Velvia curved.

[Blue_In_AK]

1. I love irises,

especially this kind. They remind me of my grandma, who used to have a bunch of them around her house. I think the only irises that grow up here are the small blue ones, like the wild variety.

[regnaD kciN]

2. Lovely shot...

...but you're right about the ISO.

Have you tried Noise Ninja? I've found it does a really good job of removing the worst part of ISO noise without affecting sharpness, especially when run in conjunction with TLR's free creative sharpening script. It can't do miracles, of course, but it can help the situation considerably.

I ran these on a section of your photo (cropping the image a bit to save bandwidth), and got the following result. I think you can see that it cleared up quite a bit of the noise.

[Tallison]

3. Pretty pic!

Were there particular conditions that compelled you to go with a high ISO? I've heard my new Nikon D70 produces a lot at higher ratings, which is among the reasons I selected the fastest lens I could afford to go with it.

[TahitiNut]

4. I'm just guessing, but I'd say depth of field.

Shallow depth of field from wide aperture, needing fast shutter and higher ISO? :shrug:

[CC]

5. Simply beautiful.

And very much needed after spending two days tearing my yard and losing a 35 foot tree in the process.