Great crested grebes - courtship

[Jonathan Ashton]

Camera Model Canon EOS-1D X
Shooting Mode Manual Exposure
Tv(Shutter Speed) 1/2000
Av(Aperture Value) 8.0
Metering Mode Evaluative Metering
Exposure Compensation -1/3
ISO Speed 3200
Auto ISO Speed ON
Lens EF500mm f/4L IS USM +2x
Focal Length 1000.0mm

All C&C welcome, I have been back several times, caught the weed exchanges as opposed to the dance , but the light and the background was not good.

[Joseph Przybyla]

Lovely image, a tenderness in their courting. If birds love it is certainly displayed in the look of the bird with the tilted head. Thank you for sharing, Jonathan.

[gail bisson]

A beautiful image.
You are getting some great tack sharp shots with your 2x- not easy to do!
The head positions of both birds are what set this image apart from the ordinary!
Very nice
Gail

[Mike Poole]

Great interaction and superb details throughout - a really nice shot Jon

Mike

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Jon love this behavior shot .
Great pose and and lovely overall tone and color palette :5

I think you should have gone to F 9/10 for a bit more DOF / IQ when shooting with the 2x TC . As the bird on the left appear to be a bit softer than the bird on the right .
Have you applied any NR to the subjects ? I am just asking curious if you did in DPP ?
Very nice frame , TFS Andreas

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Jon, you are so fortunate to get to capture these guys, and I wish I could have this in my files. Love the overall colours on these Grebes, and the tilted head of the LH Grebe takes this over the top.

Before reading Andreas comment, I too thought the LH Grebe's head a bit softer than the other one.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Thanks very much everyone for the comments. I usually try to go for a little less than full aperture with the 2xTC, in this case the subject was going to be cropped and as it was in the centre I thought image quality would be very little different. A little more DOF would have been nice.
These were the DPP4 settings:

Brightness adjustment -0.17
White balance Click white balance A3.0
Picture Style (Standard)
Contrast 0.0
Shadow +3.0
Highlight -4.0
Sharpness Strength : 1.0
Reduce luminance noise 5.0
Reduce chrominance noise 7.0
If you have any reservations Andreas or comments then they are most welcome.

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Jon i would not call it reservations Jon ..... i just might try to set Lumo NR to 0 , and deal with the lumo noise in PS . As i find the value of 5 a bit high for ISO 3200 .
From my POV always better to close the aperture when using a TC ..... well if light allows .
Cheers Andreas