Photo of the Day
Monday, April 21, 2008 at 12:05AM 
Canon 1DsMkIII, 400mm f/4 DO, 1/200 sec @ f/4, ISO 1000
After four game drives here in Mala Mala, we have had two *excellent* leopard sightings, as well as amazing lion experiences. When we arrived by airplane on Friday, we checked in, grabbed a quick lunch and headed out for our first game drive. Within 20 minutes we had located and tracked a 6 year old leopard, the "bicycle crossing male", and we spent two hours following him, going ahead of him and watching him from a distance. I definitely captured more than 200 images in this short amount of time, and this is the only image that I have processed so far. The challenge was to have enough depth of field for his face, enough shutter speed to not have a blurry image, and a low enough ISO to keep the noise in check. I was able to find just the right angle where his face had enough DOF on both of his eyes at f/4, otherwise if he had a bit more angle on his face I would have needed f/5.6 for the image to work.
Additionally, today we located a pride of three adult females and their 9 cubs. Hopefully I was able to capture an image worth sharing. The challenge is finding the time to download, process and upload images!
Reader Comments (2)
This is awesome. Love it. And love the processing. Great job!
patti
this is also the bicycle crossing male. look at the v shaped spot pattern