Mother and Cub

[Loi Nguyen]

Tough image to pull off I know. Spotted this leopard mother and her weeks old cub walking along the road on our night drive at Selinda camp. Looks like the mother had to move the cub for safety and she chose the cover of darkness to do it. The cub was such a good cub and sticking to her Mother like glue. We followed them for a little while, but then the Mother decided to get off the road and took the cub into the bush parallel with the road, we knew we began to interfere with them, so we backed off to give them peace. We looked for them the next day, but didn't find them.

1DX
70-200f2.8 II @ 102mm
1/200
f4
ISO-6400
Handheld
Light from spot light.
Reduced highlights and boosted up exposure in Lr5

Not sure what can be done to improve this image. Appreciate your feedback.

How would you shoot in such conditions?

Thank you

Loi

[Colin Driscoll]

A good record of an interesting encounter Loi, and I don't think you can do much better because of the complete lack of data in the shadows. Did you try a vertical crop?

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Loi, I think you did exceeding well under the circumstances and I'm glad it was a spot rather than a flash. Perhaps loosing some off the RHS and running some NR would help, especially on the LHS, but the cropping is no deal breaker. An awkward angle, but again, you have to seize the moment. I might have gone to f/2.8 and gained a tad more SS.

It's a great camp, hope you got to see the Hippos whilst there?

TFS
Steve

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Loi - I agree that you did extremely well under the circumstances. In these types of situations sometimes it is best to try multiple settings in the field if you have the time (easier said than to remember in a moment like this too). For me, the most important thing is to enjoy a special sighting like this but not interfere with or stress the animal. Sounds like you achieved this. Good suggestions by Steve.

TFS,
Rachel

[Tobie Schalkwyk]

Couldn't have done any better than this, Loi. Absolutely Beautiful! Thanks for sharing!

[Marc Mol]

A wonderful capture here Loi :5 and a most unusual one to see a mum and such a young cub at night moving location (usually occurring during the day) as this time is fraught with danger for her offspring, she had her reasons of course.





Not sure what can be done to improve this image. Appreciate your feedback.
How would you shoot in such conditions?



After taking this from this angle I would have asked my driver to slowly back up and tried for a much lower angle if at all possible.

For my spot lit leopard images (no flash) I like to under expose my images by anything from -1 to -3 EV in conjunction with high ISO from 800 upwards with DOF from f/2.8 tp f/7 allowing you much increased shutter speeds,
your 1DX & 70-200 f/2.8 is a great combo for this.:w3
In your image here you would have been able to reduce your ISO whilst still having adequate S/S and also reducing the larger light fall off from the spotlight, then further selectively masking the light fall off later in PS/LR.

An example here:
http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php/94909-The-quot-Night-Stalker-quot?highlight=

Another good article here from Seyms Brugger:
http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/149889659?access_key=key-1tjb003uzbsaqpcgr5br&allow_share=false&escape=false&show_recommendations=false&view_mode=scroll

[Gabriela Plesea]

What a tandem you have here, Loi! Love the way your subjects walk at the same pace, left paw forward! Amazing sighting and well done for capturing this under difficult circumstances, well processed and I really enjoyed viewing this image, cub is adorable - thank you for this post!

Kind regards,

[Loi Nguyen]

Hi Everyone, thank you for your kind comments and encouraging words. From the IQ stand point, I know the image has limitations, but several people from the safari group including my wife Adele vowed for this image to be the most memorable one from the trip. Yes, the cub is SO adorable. I will look into my files if I had any frame a bit further away and thus an apparent lower POV. I had several images whereas the cub was trailing a bit behind and was not in good focus, so I thought F4 was in fact a good choice. In this frame, the mother was in sharp focus, but the cub was not, so I used USM 120/0.3/0 on the Mother and 80(I think)/0.5/0 on the cub.

Marc, your link on the leopard at night was great. Did you use a smaller spot light? I tried to reduce the exposure in post, but the light was not falling off fast enough.

thanks again.

Loi

[Andre Pretorius]

Hi Loi

Love the moment captured.

I tried night photography at a few occasions, not good results:e3

Looked at Marc's links, will try the suggestions...

Only suggestion I have re your image is to maybe try a vertical crop.

Good work!

Andre

[Marc Mol]

Marc, your link on the leopard at night was great. Did you use a smaller spot light? I tried to reduce the exposure in post, but the light was not falling off fast enough.



By using -EV Loi you are also reducing the brightest parts of your spotlight, giving a softer look. Also it appears that the spot light we use in SLNP does not have as wide a spread
as in SSGR.

[edwardselfe]

What a lovely sight. True indeed that it's uncommon to see this at night. You did what you could and got a shot. i would be happy to have in my files.

Agree some NR needed and perhaps some smoothing using negative clarity and a brush?

Super shot.

Ed