Out on a limb.

[Marc Mol]

Just back from a fabulous 16 days in Vumbura, with one highlight was documenting 2 sub adult leopards for 11 of those 16, being fortunate to see them almost daily.

Oddly enough it was the mother that was somwhat skittish and saw here only on 2 occasions as she called her kids and led them away to her kills.

Here the 18 mth old female steps out to better guage her prey, a small herd of Reedbuck she had eyes on.

It was 6.35pm and the sun had set as she stepped out from the darkness and shade of a heavy canopy, I cropped out some specular highlights to 4;5 format and selectively reduce the BG exp by 1/2 stop and added a slight warm tone to this B&W conversion for this months theme,

although I personally feel the colour version has more merit.

NG 12 concession- Botswana.

Nikon D5
Nikkor 400 f/2.8E FL VR
1/1600s
f/3.5
ISO25600

1400px wide.

Cheers
Marc

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Marc - Welcome back. I like the pose on the branch and the intensity of her stare at the prey. Sharpness looks good and I like the conversion but the high ISO has introduced a lot of noise and gritty look to the leopard. I understand though not using a spotlight so as not to give her position away while on the hunt so applaud your ethics once again.

TFS,
Rachel

[Marc Mol]

Thanks Rachel

but the high ISO has introduced a lot of noise and gritty look to the leopard.

Granted the sun had set and light was absolutley minimal, it's impossible not to have degrees of noise here and if it weren't for the class leading D5 this would not have been possible, the big difference is, yes there is (colour) noise but it's not at the expense of detail which is still holding up well I feel.

Here's the colour version.

[haseeb badar]

Hi Marc -- definitely the BW version for me and i am ok with the noise in it , gives a vintage feel to the image. I really liked the pose and appreciate your work ethic as always. very nicely done.

TFS !

[John Mack]

I like both versions of this one. Nice pose and i like that stare. Looks great for that high ISO.

[Sanjeev Aurangabadkar]

Stunning detail at that ISO with the B&W working quiet well here. Nice one Marc. Look forward to more.

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Marc ...i do like the image from the content POV , with the Leopard looking into the dead space !!
Well framed and captured .
The B&W does work well in terms of contrast and tone , the color version is a bit too contrasty in my eyes .
Both versions ... does not work well in terms of noise , well just my honest opinion , would accept better IQ at that LOW HIGH Iso for a Nikon . But easy to say without seeing the RAW .
Nevertheless it is worth trying a version with less contrast to avoid the high noise level .

TFS Andreas

Sanjeev .... wonder where you see detail , i just see tons of noise .

[Morkel Erasmus]

I like the shallow DOF here and the leopard emerging out of darkness.

Have to agree it looks just a tad too noisy from what I would expect given the gear that was used - perhaps it was a tad underexposed to begin with? My initial thoughts on the techs were that you could easily have gone to 1/800 or even 1/500 with that lens and gained some ISO/exposure?

[Marc Mol]

I like the shallow DOF here and the leopard emerging out of darkness.

Have to agree it looks just a tad too noisy from what I would expect given the gear that was used - perhaps it was a tad underexposed to begin with? My initial thoughts on the techs were that you could easily have gone to 1/800 or even 1/500 with that lens and gained some ISO/exposure?

I should clarify that for part of this trip I had loaned the D5/400 to a client to try and he (accidently) changed one of my custom settings bank which I use/set for AF fine tune/JPG only and not noticed for a while, and so this image and many others was shot inadvertantly in JPG only , hence making the best of a bad PP situation.

But do agree Morkel 1/500 or 1/800 would have likely sufficed, but cranked it to 1/1600 in anticipation of faster movement.

[Morkel Erasmus]

Ugh, hate it when that happens.
I often set the cameras to jpg for using at home shooting family stuff. Then go on a trip, takes me 2 days to realised I never set it to RAW again...

[Jonathan Ashton]

I don't wish to be a smart *** but for the very reasons you mention I never set my DSLRs to jpeg, we will only have to guess what the result would have been had it been taken in raw. Sorry I have to say the first think I noticed was noise in the B&W and the colour version, without so much noise I bet it would have been a really good image.

[Marc Mol]

I don't wish to be a smart *** but for the very reasons you mention I never set my DSLRs to jpeg, we will only have to guess what the result would have been had it been taken in raw. Sorry I have to say the first think I noticed was noise in the B&W and the colour version, without so much noise I bet it would have been a really good image.

I hear you Jonathan, have even had this happen to me when sending in my bodies for service @ Nikon Switzerland to find them returned set to JPG, got caught once with this.
Agree....it's best not to set any menus to any JPG only setting.

[Jay Shah]

Hi Marc, I like color version better. For ISO 25600, final result is impressive. For B&W, I think if you subtract some black from white in selective color adjustment, it will make whites brighter and improve the image IMHO.

[Marc Mol]

Thanks Jay

For B&W, I think if you subtract some black from white in selective color adjustment, it will make whites brighter and improve the image IMHO.

That's one of the techniques I used (albeit on a less subtle basis, as over doing it gives less satisfying results) with this image already.