Mother and Daughter

[Arno Ellmer]

This serval and her sibling were wandering through tall grass in the Masai Mara.It is not often that one encounters two together.It was extremely difficult to obtain clear shots through the tall grass as they went about their business.Suddenly they appeared in a small clearing and walked towards the morning sun .
I told the guide to reverse so that I could get some distance and a better angle.While he was maneauvering the vehicle I realised that I had to shoot handheld on the go , lest the servals disappear into the grass again.
I managed a few frames while the game vehicle was bouncing about wildly and then they disappeared.When the vehicle stopped and the action was over I viewed my images.I nearly choked when I saw the blown out images ..... EC + 3.0 !!!! I must have invariable changed some of the settings in the heat of the moment.
Later ,after viewing the images again I managed to recover most of the detail.
The comp was the best I could come up with from the series of images shot.
Having just acquired a new Dell Monitor I notice that the colours are not quite right and I will have to recalibrate.

All comments are welcome.

Canon 1DX
500mm + 1.4x
f/7.1
1/500
ISO 800
EC +3.0 !!!!
Hand held from a moving vehicle.

[Rachel Hollander]

Arno - we've all made mistakes like this in the heat of the moment in the field. It's nice that you at least have a record of the sighting.

TFS,
Rachel

[Nancy Bell]

Great subjects! It is so hard to see something wonderful, try to convey what you want to a driver, keep your eye on the prize AND check all the settings on your camera. I had the experience of 6 of us watching in awe as a brown-colored wolf slowly trotted across a dry creek bed right in front of us and not one of us even thought to raise our cameras! So no one even got a record shot.

[Loi Nguyen]

Well, you recovered the image nicely, I wouldn't have known it without reading your text. The light is a bit hash and the upper part of the eyes is in shadow, you may want to brighten it a little. Not much you can do about the comp, its really too bad that you clipped the second cat, but that was life. Did you have a medium telephoto on a second body with you? May be next time. Loi

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Elmo, it's very unfortunate especially with such a sitting, however as mentioned earlier we all make mistakes at times and this is why you should alway shoot one image and check the histogram and then make the required adjustment, but easier said than done at the heat of the moment. In addition the image is RGB, not sRGB

I think you did the best you can comp wise, but both IQ and colour is way off, irrespective of +3 you can still recover things and it's important to get you monitor calibrated before you next post I feel to do your images justice. ISO 800 is default for me, but find I am shooting more 1600-3200 with excellent results, so just watch your set up. The 1.4 old or new is about the same, perhaps a fraction better, but the 2x is significantly better couple with the lens & body you should be steeling the show. :S3:

TFS
Steve

[Morkel Erasmus]

Arno, can't add much advice to what's been said already. Love the comp and sighting, I have been there too in blowing the small window of opportunity through wrong settings or forgetting the camera was on manual focus and 25 seconds exposure with a 3s shutter delay from photographing stars the previous evening haha.


ISO 800 is default for me, but find I am shooting more 1600-3200 with excellent results, so just watch your set up.

Welcome Steve, us "dark siders" have been shooting in that range comfortably since '09 :w3:t3

[Arno Ellmer]

Thanks for all the comments and suggestions. Always appreciated !