I took this shot of a young elephant playing with its mother in Thailand in the 1980’s with my medium format film camera, the Mamiya RZ 67. The deep overcast sky meant light conditions weren’t ideal, and I was using Ektachrome 64 at the time. By today's standards, 64 ISO is ridiculously slow. Given that the maximum lens aperture of the 250mm telephoto was f/4.5, I was forced to use the disappointing shutter speed of 1/30th of a second. As a result, the elephants weren’t sharp. The animals were getting their daily bath – hence the water being squirted at them – and I’ve never sent this image to a magazine or to my stock agency because of the inferior quality. So, I decided to bring it back to life using Topaz Sharpen AI, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that both elephants look so much sharper than in the original.
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