"The Eye of the Leopard"

[Bill Holsten]

Leopards appear to be rather popular on this forum of late. In this spirit I submit this image of "Legadima", an adult female I photographed on the Mombo concession in Botswana's Okavango Delta in September 2008. Legadima starred in the National Geographic documentary "The Eye of the Leopard". Here, along with her two 8-month old cubs, she is feeding on an impala kill.

EOS 20D, 70-200mm L IS lens at 125mm, 1/80", f5.6, ISO 800, with fill flash, hand held.

[Steve Kaluski]

Good to get a shot of a Leopard with a kill Bill.

Sadly the SS (1/80) has not allowed a sharp image here which is a shame, but wouldn't advise not going beyond ISO800 with the 20D. In addition I do find the flash rather harsh, but sadly I am not sure if you can regulate the actual flash? Would suggest cropping some space from the top, I would suggest taking a line from where the small green leaves run over the tree top right giving a more 'landscape' format.

TFS
Steve.

[Harshad Barve]

lovely moment , agreed with Steve here
TFS

[Hendri Venter]

Great sighting. Some good advise from Steve. TFS

[Morkel Erasmus]

good critique and advice given above...must've been nice to witness her raising her own cubs...

[Bill Holsten]

Thanks to each of you who replied to my post. You are right, of course, that the image as seen here is woefully soft. In fact, at full resolution as seen on my 21" monitor, it is acceptably crisp. I obviously have not mastered the techinque of reducing an image to the pixel dimensions and file size required for these forums in a way that preserves acceptable image crispness. Any advice in that regard would be appreciated.