I've always liked this shot even though it's not perfect. The depth of field is too shallow and the middle cub is hidden behind the mother. Still, it's a sweet image, and I like how the lions are using the manmade track to conveniently walk through the African bush. I photographed this in the Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya with a 500mm Canon lens at f/4 using my first serious digital camera, the 1Ds Mark II. The noise in the digital files in 2007 was significant, and this is why I used such a low ISO -- 200. That made the shutter speed only 1/100th of a second, however, and this is much too slow for a super telephoto. I was using a bean bag for stability, but the lions were moving and a faster speed was necessary. Today, I would have raised the ISO to 1600, and that would have enabled me to shoot with a speed of 1/800. Back then, 1600 ISO produced images that were so noisy as to be unusable.
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