How to make realistic feathers?

[HauptmannPingu (Milo Rogers)]

Is there a go to way to create realistic looking feathers easily? I’ve tried using the hair particle technique but that isn’t really ideal as I haven’t been able to get the ends of the barbs to be evenly spaced with it, and modeling the base of the feather with the separated barbs and barbules is proving to be impossible for me. Anyone have any ideas?

[RSEhlers]

I use a scan of different shaped feathers and apply it to a plane with alpha.
Place them all in a collection and use the collection as the render option in a Hair Particle system…