I've always loved this shot because it's such a sweet moment between mother and cub. There were a few challenges in photographing these cheetahs. This was taken about 11 o'clock in the morning, and while the cats were shaded, the background was sunny. It took several steps to tone the very bright background down to a non-distracting density. When you darken light areas, they tend to go very saturated. I had to desaturate the yellow in this portion of the image. Then, I had to carefully clone out several blades of grass that were in front of the cub's face. I shot this with a 500mm lens plus a 2x teleconveter, giving me 1000mm of focal length. My settings were 1/250, f/8, and 200 ISO. The camera I was using at this time -- in 2008 -- was a Canon 1Ds Mark II. This was my first serious digital camera, and the noise at higher ISO settings wasn't desirable at all. So, that's why my ISO is so low. Today, I would have taken this with my 1Dx Mark II at 1000 ISO, and that would have enabled the shutter speed to be 1/1000. A shutter of 1/250 is much too slow for this much focal length, but I used a bean bag for stability and that did, in fact, work. Still, the rule for shutter speeds versus telephotos is the speed should be the reciprocal of the focal length.
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