King Penguin - Volunteer Point - Falklands

[Claude Ostfeld]

The King Penguin (Aptenodytes patagonicus) is the second largest species of penguin standing erect at about 3.0 ft (90 cm) and can weigh 24 to 35 lbs (11 to 16 kg). The Emperor Penguin (found only in Antarctica) is taller and heavier.

King Penguins eat small fish and squid. They dive normally to depths of around 330 ft (100 mt) but have been tracked to depths of over 1000 ft (345 mt).

King Penguins breed on the subantarctic islands at the northern reaches of Antarctica such as South Georgia, Macquerie and the Falklands. The total population is thought to be over 2.23 million pairs.

Falkland Islands - Volunteer Point on East Falkland

Nikon F100, Kodak Ektachrome E200, 80-200 IF-ED F2.8D AF-S - Coolpix 5000 scanner.

[Arthur Morris]

Hi Claude, You have a lovely image design, a good exposure, a beautiful subject, and a nice BKGR but the feathers have little detail at best and it looks as if there is fog filter over the whole bird or as if you created the image while photographing through a sheet of hazy plastic.

Can you convert the RAW file, change it to a JPEG without doing anything to it, and post that so we can try to figure out what went wrong?

[Arthur Morris]

ps; I have a killer South Georgia/Falklands trip lined up for OCT 2012. If you are interested in learning more click here. (http://www.birdsasart-blog.com/2010/12/11/the-skinny-on-a-killer-south-georgiafalklands-cruise-october-2012/)

[Daniel Cadieux]

I agree with Artie. The techs look good, but it looks like the post processing and/or resizing went awry along the way. I notice this is scanned film, so perhaps redoing the PP would give the image the finishing touch it likely deserves...

P.S. Thanks for the info about this species, very informative!:)

[Arthur Morris]

Ah, I did not notice that this was from scanned film. My Nikon scanner went bad and all of my scans looked like this....

[Claude Ostfeld]

I re scanned the image using NEF instead of TIFF as output and 14 bit.
I think I have squeezed some more detailes out of this image.
Comments are welcome.
The technical details are the same as indicated in the first post.Claude

[Arthur Morris]

Hi Claude, It is better than the first post, but only 1000 times. The BLACKs are still clipped badly but heck, that's film. At least you eliminated the plastic haze filter.

[Arthur Morris]

That said, there was still lots of room to improve the image in Pane #6. For the repost here I did a 10/100/30 SHadow adjustment, removed a few then visible white specks, and ran noise reduction and a 1 px Gaussian blur on the BKGR only.

All as described in detail in Digital Basics (https://store.birdsasart.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=252) :)

The info is there for those with $20 who want to learn Photoshop.....

[Claude Ostfeld]

Hi Artie,
I use Lightroom 3 which does not offer all the correction tools that Photoshop does.
Anyway here is my latest rendition. I think I can be pleased with the result which I am sure can be improved as can most things.
I'll post another penguin image later using the skills I have picked up. .
Thanks for your help which has really been precious.

Claude

[Arthur Morris]

The last repost is certainly a huge improvement. The blacks could stand to go a bit lighter still. Thanks for your kind words and YAW.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Yep, the reposts are alot better than the original...it was worth re-scanning for sure!

[Claude Ostfeld]

Thanks Daniel.
FYI I have posted another King Penguin image.
Claude