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Jay Gould
02-08-2010, 05:08 PM
This "landscape" was made at the Salisbury Plains, South Georgia and depicts a small portion of over 200,000 breeding King Penguins.

I have posted this for a few of reasons - 1) to share an amazing experience (we are still dreaming of penguins and ice bergs; it is absolutely amazing to walk amongst thousand of penguins mere feet from you and have them look up at you and then ignore you!), 2) Randy in the King Penguin Profile thread http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php?t=55930 said we would like to see "more of the body" - Randy, not possible with the Profile as that is all there is; however, here are lots of whole bodies, and 3) to discuss the settings.

I realize that I should have increased ISO for more SS; should I have also sacrificed DOF for SS?

While the mountains give perspective to the location, would you crop away some of the mountain perhaps down to the snow line on the right side, or more?

Camera: 5D2
Capture date/time: 9 Jan 10; 7:40am
Light condition: grey!
Lens: 24-105 f/4
Focal length: 105mm
Distance: 12m
Extender: none
Tube: none
Flash/Comp: no;
ISO: 400
Exp Prog: Av
Speed: 1/25 sec
Aperture: f/18
Exp Comp: + 1 2/3
Metering: Evaluative
WB: Auto
AF Drive: AI Servo
Tripod: yes
Filter: none
Crop: minimal
Processed in LR 3 (beta) and then resized in CS4 - plus Pixel Genius Sharpening.
All C&Cs gratefully appreciated!

Dave Mills
02-08-2010, 05:39 PM
Hi Jay, Lucky you to have this scene in front of you and be able to walk among the penguins.
Your image is soft in places due to the slow SS and the fact that many penguins are moving. You could of gone down to f16 or even tried f11. I usually try a variety of settings if I'm faced with situations where I can't do exactly what I
would normally. This was a fixed scene so you had some time to play with it.
I did 2 things to the image. I cropped a small amount off the top. I didn't take all the mountains since I still thought it important to show environment. I noticed a blue color caste throughout and tried an easy fix. Sometimes auto color or auto levels will take out color castes(definately not always) and in this case auto color took it out.
I sometimes use Nik remove color caste also..
I looked at the link of the closeup which you did a good job on. You should of had a whole bunch of those. The King Penguin is a beautiful species....

Jay Gould
02-08-2010, 06:09 PM
Jackie and I approve of the repost! :D

Thanks.

Paul Marcellini
02-08-2010, 07:49 PM
I like Dave's crop and agree with trying a variety of settings. You could have have raised the iso on the 5d2, I have keepers at 3200 when overexposed some. This scene is relatively bright so iso 800 would have given you a pretty nice noise free image.

DanielTMiller
02-09-2010, 12:58 AM
Wow, now that is a bird photographers paradise, agree the repost looks much better. Love the composition of the bend in the coast.

Danny Laredo
02-09-2010, 09:02 AM
S.Georgia is so high on my wish list, so you are lucky to get there...such a wonderful place.

the image as noted is a touch soft but still one can get a true sence of this place.

Kobus Tollig
02-09-2010, 09:29 AM
Nice one here. As always Dave has done well. I just wish the penguins was sharp

Jess Lee
02-09-2010, 11:13 PM
That is an impressive sight

Harshad Barve
02-15-2010, 07:27 AM
One sight I would love to visit once in life , Nice image inhanced by Dave
TFS