Lazy Cheetah

[Sanjeev Aurangabadkar]

This Cheetah was the same guy that posed for me yawning. We reached the spot where he was resting and he lifted his head to take a look at us approaching. I got this head shot with the 5D3 and 500mm+1.4 X as light began to drop. He then woke up stretched and yawned and went back to his kill (a tommy).
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Camera
Canon EOS 5D Mark III (http://www.flickr.com/cameras/canon/eos_5d_mark_iii/)


Exposure
(1/160)


Aperture
f/5.6


Focal Length
700 mm


ISO Speed
800


Exposure Bias
+2/3 EV

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[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Sanjeev - another nice portrait but it feels a little light to me. I did a midtone adjustment to the cheetah only in levels, moving the middle slider to the right to .88. There was a blue cast to the black of the nose so I got rid of that. I also reduced the reds overall and then applied another round of USM to the cheetah. WDYT?

TFS,
Rachel

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Sanjeev, I've looked at this a number of time and am not sure about the crop? Whether to loose a bit more off the foot so there are no 'legs' apparent, or if you should have shot wider and had all of the cheetah in, however this is a 'typical' cheetah pose. Rachel's RP addressed the majority of my thoughts, however I do feel more/greater DOF would have helped here, so cranking up the ISO to say 2000 would have helped.

Would need Anette's App DOF calculator on this, but perhaps f/9 to get those ears in, so nose to ears were sharp????? :bg3:

TFS
Steve

[Sanjeev Aurangabadkar]

Thanks Rachel and Steve. Rachel, your adjustments have improved the image. I went back to the RAW and checked if the focus was on the eye, it was spot on, on the eye. In retrospect I should have upped the ISO to increase the SS as the original RAW is a tad soft as Steve has suggested! Where do I get the DOF calculator? On App store?
Thanks again.
Cheers
Sanjeev

[Steve Kaluski]

I'll get Anette to drop you a reply. :w3

[Sanjeev Aurangabadkar]

Thanks Rachel and Steve. I like your RP Rachel, I didn't notice the colour cast & am glad you pointed it out. The colour correction looks good. I have wider shots of the animal taken with the 70-200 f/4 IS & 7D, will post that soon. But I am spoilt by the 5D III files and am kinda neglecting the 7D ones now :-) the 5D3 files are so much better!

[Morkel Erasmus]

I concur with the comments above. I would try and bring some colour back too. DOF seems enough but there's a lot of in-focus body that could have been in-focus ears, depending on where you placed the focus point...
Again - with the converter on you are actually LOSING DOF (5.6 is shallower for the same distance-to-subject than with a bare 500mm on f5.6)...so my tendency is to stop down even more if I can (especially being so close to the subject).

[BenBotha]

I agree with the comments but if one looks at the hair above the eyes-the hair is quite sharp. The eyes are on the same level and should be sharp too. ? the shadow of the eye brow that makes it appear less sharp. If it was mine I would crop a little closer to remove the legs at the bottom. I agree with Morkel about the colour.
Ben