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Mother and son
Female leopard in foreground and her 7 month-old male cub. The female is the leopard I've posted shots of in recent weeks on this forum. She and the cub eventually mingled on this log after her unsuccessful hunt. She gave her son a playful bite on the neck - another nice moment to witness - before they wandered off. I have a little more room on all four sides of this but not much as it represents about 70% of the frame area.
Technical: Canon 80D with EF 100-400 (MkII) at 271mm handheld. Manual exposure 1/800 sec, f7.1, ISO 1000. Processed in Canon DPP 4 (digital lens optimiser, crop, lighting adjustments, default NR) then exported 16 bit TIFF to Photoshop Elements with Neat Image NR plugin where minor NR applied. Small branch behind cubs tail cloned out and some stems of grass in the foreground also cloned out. Sharpened after final size reduction.
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Lifetime Member
A great sighting here Glenn, but it has me wondering if there is a better frame from this series. I think the lack of eye contact has taken away some of the impact here. Maybe if you do have more space to the right and below it may be worth considering a revisit, as maybe seeing what the leopard is staring at might help.
Techs wise a faster shutter speed would have helped here, there is a little movement that could possibly have been avoided. Having used crop cameras myself I know its a difficult mindset to really push the ISO but when you look at some of the work Daniel Cadiuex produces with his 7d2 then the smaller format can obviously produce the goods when pushed.
Sorry if this sounds a little negative, its not a bad shot by any means, but would go in the 'nearly' folder for me.
Mike
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Hi Glenn- Unfortunately, I have to agree with Mike here. It's a good record shot to remember a special sighting of the two together but it doesn't work for me with mom's eyes closed. Perhaps you have others in the sequence where mom's eyes are open or post one of the interaction with the bite on the neck if you have it. I would also add a little more room back in to the left and below as Mike suggests since you said you have more room all sides.
TFS,
Rachel
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Hi Glenn -- This must have been a wonderful sighting for sure , these are amazing creatures and a treat for photographers if a cooperative subject is found. Sadly i too am in agreement with the above comments , this frame is not grabbing me too much because of closed eyes of the mother. Also the stick coming from the bottom of the frame in the FG is a bit distracting.
Would love to see a better frame from this encounter . TFS !
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Nice frame like the composition and the tree they are on. The one on the left looks like it is going to sneeze or something.
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Wildlife Moderator
Hi Glenn, I think from your intro, the framing at FF sounds about right, as presented I think it's just a tad too tight. From what I've seen of this lens, it does deliver good clarity & sharpness, but the whole image appears very saturated and so not only are you loosing some detail, but more importantly there is little separation between subject & environment. Surprised no one else thinks that??? Yellows & Oranges seem ramped up and bleed into the whites, so if you have increased them I would peg them back. Also, just watch your Blacks & Contrast. Not sure if you can create a duplicate Raw in DPP, but if you can just try with the eye dropper click on a 'white' area and see what happens. Not the most scientific method but I bet you will be surprised. Agree that if the female had her eyes open then it would have been better, but I do very much like the tails being curled. You could loose the stick coming up from the foot if you are careful, but I think best leave it, however the leaves in the corner need to be pruned.
I think you position was probably about right here. I know the 80D has it's limitations in ISO from what you've said in the past, so I think you were on the cusp for techs, however if the cub leaped then I feel you might have just had a streak, but that may have looked quite cool.
TFS
Steve
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Thank you all for your comments... you've all given me plenty to think about! My overall conclusion though is that it's probably not worth doing much more with this except purely as a learning exercise. I won't deal with all the comments but pick up on a few.
Sharpness and shutter speed: The shot is actually quite sharp where it counts. I've included a 1:1 crop from the original RAW with nothing done to it except application of digital lens optimiser applied, mild sharpness (=3) and default NR in DPP. It's about as good as the lens will produce. Perhaps I'm not sharpening enough after final downsizing? Agree if the cats had move suddenly, I would have been in trouble with my settings.
Other shots in the sequence: I do have others but she is relaxing and keeping her eyes the way they are seen here unfortunately. I personally don't mind that but happy to accept the majority view that it's not good. I also have shots of the neck bite that are quite nice except for that damned OOF stick on the lower right of the log partly blocking the cub's face which he had lowered at that point. Murphy strikes again. I do have a few shots of the cub alone but not convinced they are worth posting.
As for WB and saturation, I do value hearing views on this as it's possible I could overlook something here and perceptions do count as well. Just to let you know what I did and why... I've used the set WB (Cloudy) in DPP as this reflects the lighting at the time and no reason to think it would be out (eg due to early or late light, objects nearby reflecting onto the subject etc that would require some WB tweaking). Saturation is set to zero and I haven't boosted it anywhere. So the colour is probably close to what it should be. I do use the eyedropper tool in DPP to set WB from time to time. The problem is that I have to have a point to 'eyedropper'. In this case, the logical choice would be part of the 'white' on one of the leopards. To do this though, I'd want to be convinced it was actually neutral white (R=G=B), not warm white. I strongly suspect the colour should actually be warm white on those parts of the leopard.
Oh, and sorry about the missing profile for the shot (my bungle). However it was converted and saved as sRGB so should be displaying properly for you.
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Wildlife Moderator
The shot is actually quite sharp where it counts. I've included a 1:1 crop from the original RAW with nothing done to it except application of digital lens optimiser applied, mild sharpness (=3) and default NR in DPP.
Glenn, I'm not wanting to go off topic so I keep it brief and we can discuss off line, or if you want start a new thread in Workflow, but you need to look at the RAW at 100% via DPP, but with NO sharpening applied, does it look sharp?
I'm going to send you something which I think you will find of interest and hopefully when you have time have a play.
Cheers
Steve
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Glenn - I also have a 100-400 II lens and put it to a lot of use. That lens is capable of razor sharp images. Have you microadjusted the lens with the camera body at both 100mm and 400mm?
Rachel
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Thanks Rachel. Yes, I have done the AF micro adjustment (AFMA) quite a few times. I've had a private exchange with Steve on this too. Thank you both for raising it. That doesn't seem to be the issue. I think you are both implying that you'd expect more from the lens and that my 1:1 crop isn't as sharp as you'd hoped? No need to respond if that is the case. Can't really say much more about that except that examination of the frame indicates the cats were at the best point of focus. Note I've chosen a crop that shows a few different planes so you can see how sharpness varies across this. Note also that lenses, especially zoom lenses, can vary significantly from copy to copy. Rachel, maybe you were lucky (and me unlucky) in getting one of the sharpest ones? Have a read of the following if you are interested in how much they do vary if you want to get worried!...
https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2017/02/things-you-didnt-want-to-know-about-zoom-lenses/
As for the performance of the 100-400 MkII, I find it very good and certainly a vast improvement optically compared to the Mark I version which I used to own. However, it is by no means a top performer especially compared to the ultra-expensive Canon supertelephoto primes. The DxO Mark website has objectively measured data on a whole range of lenses including the 100-400 MkII. It achieves a sharpness measurement of 24 perceptual megapixels on the 50 Mpixel 5Ds R (that camera has no anti-aliasing filter introducing blur to the image and a pixel size similar to the crop sensor camera so is the most useful body to measure the actual lens optical performance). This compares to 14 perceptual megapixels for the MkI version. Compare this to some of the primes:
300 f2.8 MkII: This scores and massive 45 perceptual megapixels and is the sharpest lens in the entire Canon fleet tested by DxO Mark
600 f4 MkII: 37 perceptual megapixels
200-400 f4: 33 perceptual megapixels.
Here's the results summary for the 100-400 MkII:
https://www.dxomark.com/Lenses/Canon...OS-5DS-R__1009
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. So not ideal i think .
