I captured this cheetah in sunset lighting with a 400mm focal length on a 100-400mm zoom. The cat was fairly close to my safari vehicle, and the sun was about 10 minutes from setting. One of the benefits of shooting when the sun is so low on the horizon is the eyes of animals are fully illuminated. Their brows don't cast shadows on their eyes. Plus, when an animal has irises that are rich in color, that color really pops in the golden light. I always shoot early and late in the day with daylight white balance. If you shoot with AWB, the rich colors we love so much about low angled sunlight are 'corrected' to be white; the magic of this beautiful light is diminished as seen on the LCD screen. My settings were 1/640, f/9, and 800 ISO. Note this mid-range lens aperture provided enough depth of field so both the nose and the eyes were sharp. Visually, it's acceptable if focus fall-off means the back of the head and body are not tack sharp, but it is never good if the nose is soft. According to my sense of aesthetics, that's terribly distracting and visually annoying. Cheetahs have an intense way of focusing on something that makes their expressions so compelling.
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