This is a rarely seen margay, a small jungle cat I was lucky to capture in Costa Rica. I ran into an American doctor living in CR, and he would habitually leave food out for the margay. Around 6am, 3 or 4 times a week, the wild cat would come out of the jungle and feed. I visited the doctor's house hoping to get a glimpse of this nocturnal and very shy cat, and on the second attempt I was rewarded with a few shots. I took this picture with a medium format film camera, the Mamiya RZ 67, just before I went digital in 2005. I was shooting Fujichrome Provia 100 -- in other words, 100 ISO -- and the maximum lens aperture I was working with was f/5.6. At 6am, the reduced ambient light on the forest floor meant it was too dark to get a sharp picture. My only option, then, was to use flash. I don't like using flash for wildlife, but my only other choice was to use a shutter speed in the 1/30th range. This would have insured my pictures wouldn't be sharp. I took this with a Mamiya 350mm telephoto (equivalent to about a 200mm telephoto in the 35mm digital format). After scanning the 6x7cm transparency on an Imacon, I cloned out the reflection of the flash in the eyes because I thought it didn't look natural. My next photo tour to Costa Rica is May 13-23 next year, and although it's focused on birds, you never know what kind of animals you'll encounter.
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