Australasian Darter (Aussie Anhinga)

[Glenn Pure]

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This bird is a female Anhinga novaehollandiae (New Holland = Australia). Taken at an urban lake in Canberra where I live. I've been after a shot of these for some time as I adore the plumage detail on them. Many similarities (and a few obvious differences like the eyes) to the north American species. This was a very cooperative bird that allowed quite a close approach. Cropped from horizontal and vertical represents about 3/4 of the frame height, so a moderately hard crop.

As always, thank you for looking and for any comments you are kind enough to share.

Technical: Canon 80D with EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM Mk II at 321mm handheld. Manual exposure 1/4000 sec, f8, ISO 1600. Processed in Canon DPP 4 (digital lens optimiser @ 50, sharpness = 2.5, crop, lighting adjustments, reduced luminance NR) then exported 16 bit TIFF to Photoshop Elements with Neat Image NR plugin. Modest NR to bird and stronger NR to background. Bird only sharpened in PSE (Sharpness tool, remove Gaussian Blur, 0.3 pixels at 50%) after final size reduction.

[Alex Becker]

Nice one Glenn, I really like pose and behavior you've captured and good exposure in both the blacks and whites. I like the crop, but do wish for a bit more on the right hand side if you have it. BG adds as well. TFS and glad you got a shot you've been after

[Isaac Grant]

Image quality is fantastic here Glenn. Looking at your settings this image must be crazy sharp because you have beautiful soft feather details and very with very minor sharpening. Love the pose here as well. A very fine image with a unique pose. Love this one.

[gail bisson]

Lovely image Glenn. The feather details are excellent.
I am not sutre about this crop and would add more on the RHS of frame.
Love the details in the whites and I love that cool eye,
Gail

[Geoffrey Montagu]

Outstanding capture, Glenn. Beautiful soft light on this great looking Darter, and a lovely background. Yes, that's a unique eye.

Geoffrey




http://500px.com/geoffreymontagu (http://500px.com/geoffreymontagu)

[Glenn Pure]

Thank you Alex, Isaac, Gail and Geoffrey. As requested, here is a wider crop with more on the right... but it now looks awfully like a square crop ;-)

That lens is a great performer and capable of some exceptional sharpness. I calculate the crop shows about 40% of the frame pixels now. The original post was around a third of the frame area.

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