Great Crested Grebe

[Rene' Villela]

Good evening!
I didn't know we had these guys here in japan. I had seen them only in England!
Well, not a great picture but something new for me. I have a few shots and they look like they need some leveling but the truth is that the camera was set well, just above water level, but the the waves were very high and this guy was going up and down.
The light was very bad and I had to set the ISO to auto and this was 1600. Too much noise.
Thank you for your comments! Rene'

Nikon D300 - AFS 300 f/4 -TC17eII, AP f/6.7, 1/1000 sec, ISO auto 1600, EV +1.0, Spot metering.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Rene,
Congrats on the new species. Running some NR on the BG will definitely help and is relatively easy. I would also recommend that you try and do a little selective sharpening on the eye and bill......but after your description......still may not work. If you don't have NR software.....try blurring the BG selectively a bit. Look forward to your future attempts as the bird looks beautiful.

[Dave Phillips]

thanks for sharing Rene'...that is some rough water indeed.
I am hardly qualified, but here's a quick rework.
I corrected a slight magenta cast overall
Levels adjust, some selective saturation and soft light layer enhancements.
Small amount of sharpening on duck only

may be some improvement

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Great find and the repost made a big difference. I might try to boost contrast a few points.

[Arthur Morris]

I like the image (which does not need to be leveled...) Good repost by Dave. I did lots more on my repost: Curves, Selective Color, Selective Sharpening of the head, and lots of Eye Doctor work as described in Digital Basics. The JAN 2009 update will be sent in about a week.

[Rene' Villela]

You guys! :)
I read all your advices and I like Dave's post! I keep learning little by little what to do with the software. I just found out how to do color selective sharpening and I was happy coz the BG noise was gone while the bird was getting sharp. So this is fun.
Now what Artie did.... well, that's a completely different shot! I didn't know I was such a good photographer! :)

Thank you all! Cheers!