Tigers at Sydney's Taronga Park Zoo

Tiger taken at Sydney's Taronga Park Zoo, eos1n, scanned and edited using GIMP. I really suck at image editing, but I tried to muck around with curves, contrast, unsharp mask and general touching up for artifacts caused by the scanning process.

This particular day at the zoo was heavily overcast and the lighting was very flat (and low), making it hard to get a shot with some punch. Image 1 was taken at around 5pm, so it was getting quite dark (and the enclosure is a dark one at the best of times). This particular tiger had been sleeping the whole afternoon and was only just starting to wake up!

Image 2 was taken about and hour and a bit earlier, lighting was slightly better. Portrait shot and panning were deliberate, she was pacing back and forth very nervously for about 35 minutes, and I wanted to show her movement. It didn't help that you had the usual crowd of rude people just jumping right in front of you whenever you tried to take a shot. Also, the enclosure was shocking, made up of eight or so panels, each about 2 and a half foot wide, each separate from the others by a thick black silicon joint of some sort. Trying to avoid getting that in the shot is really hard!

Anyways, onto the images.

Dave

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No comments/suggestions at all?

Dave

Lots of digital noise in the pics.. Need some ps work.. Camera settings?

You really need to work with photoshop. That will help a lot. I have attached an image I shot through the glass, to show what can be achieved, as you don't allow editing of your images.

I like the movement in the second shot.

Graham

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Thanks guys.

Camera eos1n, Fuji Superia 400 film. Sadly, the shot was overexposed +2 stops (I'd somehow managed to turn on exp. comp. and didn't realise until it was too late, so it ruined quite a few shots I'm afraid, this was the best that I could try and salvage...). The print was scanned at working, using their Konica copier scanner's abilities (I know, not the best, but I don't have a scanner at home). I scanned it at 600dpi, jpeg quality (tiff colour had been conveniently disabled much to my disgust by our IT department).

I worked at it in GIMP, but since I know very little about digital imaging, I most probably screwed a lot of it up. I did give the reworked image to a friend's boyfriend for him to tinker with, and that's the resultant image (which was better than my original attempts anyways). I'm not sure what you mean by "lots of digital noise", can you elaborate (remember I'm a digital newbie here), and show me how to see that digital noise?

As to PS, ain't going to happen. I use GNU/LInux and I only use GPL'd or BSD software - proprietary software is a no go zone on my PC. I cannot justify paying special attention to Adobe, especially given the overinflated price of their products. The GIMP, whilst not Photoshop, is capable of reasonably good image editing, and has many of the same features that Photoshop has. I just suck very badly at digital editing!

I'll try and find the original print and rescan it and post it up here again, so that others can play with it. I've edited my profile to allow image editing btw, sorry, I thought I had enabled that!

Dave

my humble attempt...

further fix... now it's starting to look snappy

Sorry Graham, thanks for comments! I was really happy with the panning of the 2nd shot, and the resultant 'movement' - it wasn't easy to do at all! Took a great deal many shots to get it right (and remember, this shot was taken with the eos1n, so couldn't just bin dud shots and couldn't obviously review them straight away). I really like your shot, the colours are really nice and natural, and that's what I need to aim for. These tigers were in shade, and I think that, as well as the lateness of the day (and it was slightly overcast) let do this muted colour. It didn't help that I accidently overexposed the image by 2 stops (somehow I'm managing to bloody well knock the dial and add+2 exp. comp and I have no idea how!). Your shot is really sharp as well, what lens was used and how close was the tiger to you?

Archosman, that looks a *lot* better than my feeble attempt. Now - where did I go wrong, and how did you do that?

Someone mentioned a lot of digital noise in the image, how do I tell that? I'm completely new to the digital side of things, so what others take for granted as being a well known thing, I know nothing about (mostly)...

All help appreciated!

Dave

Wow! I don't know if I'm ever gonna get the hang of this digital thing...any good books suggested to read? I think I remember one by Ben Long?

Dave

here is my attempt, just some levels adjustment, hue saturation increase on the yellows and reds, and ran through noise ninja.

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HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'image/gif' | Byte size: ZERO | PHOTOBUCKET ERROR IMAGE

here's my attempt!

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It was in shade also. I was about three feet away, jostling with the crowd to even get to see the beast, let alone shoot it! I think it was the 135L from memory. I always shoot raw and was able to make it really sing in photoshop. Getting up to speed in photoshop is the final link in the chain, along with good quality glass and good technique. It's only when all three come together, that I think you get the very best out of the equipment (but that may be controversial). You don't get to see the rubbish ones though

Graham

here's my fix

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Here is my attempt:

blue_max wrote:
It was in shade also. I was about three feet away, jostling with the crowd to even get to see the beast, let alone shoot it! I think it was the 135L from memory. I always shoot raw and was able to make it really sing in photoshop. Getting up to speed in photoshop is the final link in the chain, along with good quality glass and good technique. It's only when all three come together, that I think you get the very best out of the equipment (but that may be controversial). You don't get to see the rubbish ones though

Graham

Ahh cool. I was around twelve or so feet away, and like yourself, jostling with the crowd. Well, actually, I was one of the very few well mannered ones. You wouldn't believe how many people see you lining up to take a shot and then simply just walk right in front of you, ruining the shot. The height of rudeness if you ask me. A lot of the shots I took of the tigers turned out very average, it was just very hard to get a decent shot, with all of the people, and the way the enclosure is built (next time I'll there, I'll take a shot of the enclosure so you know what I mean). Sydney's Taronga Park Zoo hasn't been very well presented for photographers I'm afraid. I spent around 45 minutes or so with the Tiger enclosure, they are such wonderful animals.

I really didn't help myself with overexposing the image by +2 stops ( a whole series of them I might add, which made me really angry with myself as to how I'd possibly managed to do something so stupid!). If memory serves me correct, I used my 70-200 with the 1.4x TC. I'd been swapping lenses with the one body (eos1n) all day, so sometimes it gets all blurry (memory wise that is).

I can't wait for my next visit to the zoo with the D60 - all things going well, I'll have my redundancy by then, and a 300mm f2.8 as well *grins*. I decided to go that route, rather than scoop a 2nd hand eos 1d mark II. I think I'll get more usage out of the lens (and value for money) when used with both my D60 and 1n, than with the 1d mark II.

I love all the images that you've all done - they are a big improvement on my original feeble attempt. For the original image, my favourite is Dave M's I think. For the 2nd Tiger image, my favourite is sdmaker's. Now I should get the original print, re-scan it and play with GIMP again.

On a side note - how well does Adobe Elements 4 compare to Photoshop? I'm pretty sure I could run it on Linux using WINE, and it's a lot cheaper...I still think the GIMP has fantastic ability, it's just a different learning curve to Photoshop, but, that said, I think most of what you learn can be applied to both applications.

Cheers,

Dave