Finishing up in low light at the lake and this little one slowed its pace and tossed a curious glance my way.
Was a bit surprised that the focus seemed spot on,( I think?), the lens VR kicked in anyway. Lightroom processing…darkened the water and cleaned some specs and dust floating on it. Any bother from the reed reflections on this?
Is this a composite: No
Nikon D7100, 200-500lens @ 250 mm, 1/160 @f 5.6, ISO2000
Very nice, Stephen. To my eye, it looks as if the actual focus was on the breast of the bird. The face is just a very slight bit soft, but a touch more sharpening would probably fix that. Interesting what the lighting will do. This came out so gray and I’m used to thinking of them as rather brownish looking. The reflected reeds are just fine-not at all distracting and they add to the sense of environment.
Hi Stephen, I like the contrast of the bird with the surrounding reflections. From what I can tell at this image size, focus looks alright to me.
focus looks pretty good with a little drop in detail from around the eye. You may want to enhance the micro-contrast . The pale eye-ring suggests that this is a winter plumaged bird. Well done…Jim
A nice look at the grebe. The water and reeds works to show the environment. Good capture.
Well composed with a very pleasing setting. Plumage colors are different from what I’m accustomed to but this works anyway. I think it’s a little noisy because of the iso 2000 which is contributing to the slight softness. In general, you should have a faster shutter speed than 160th of a second when shooting birds. Yes you can do it but typically you will have better results at 1/640 or faster. Of course there are trade-offs.
These little Grebes are so cute, and this one is no exception. I love the reflections – both the bird and the reeds.
I wondered about a general warmup of the color temp. This is just a quick Color Balance and not sure I got the bird right.
Thank you all, @David_Schoen @Diane_Miller @Allen_Brooks @Allen_Sparks @Jim_Zablotny @Dennis_Plank for the comments and recommendations. Still rather new to bird photography and enjoy the challenges. I like the gray blue tones on the bird but do believe the white balance was a bit off. @David_Schoen I appreciate the input on the shutter speed, I think the 160 was because the meter scale was in a good exposure spot. The faster speed the better me for due to shaky hands on the 5 lb lens. @Diane_Miller appreciate your white balance redo. I think you got the bird pretty good. I’ll probably change it for the bird and keep what I got for the water. The water has too much of a rusty look, and I have a subjective preference for the blue hues.
I completely agree about the water – I think masking the warmer tones to just the bird would still be believable. The head reflection might do with a 50% mask.
