This is a Dik Dik, the smallest antelope in Africa. They stand 12 to 15 inches at the shoulder, and pretty much every predator -- from lions to eagles -- hunt dik diks. It's amazing these little herbivores are able to survive. Because they are so low to the ground, it's hard to get an eye-level shot of them particularly from a safari vehicle. Here, the animal was on a small rise, and leaning out of the Land Rover I was able to take a fairly low angle shot. My settings were 1/320, f/9, and 400 ISO, and I took the picture with a 500mm f/4 telephoto plus a 2x teleconverter giving me 1000mm of focal length. I took this in 2007 when noise was still a very serious problem. That's why my ISO setting was low, and that's why I was forced to use a shutter speed slower than I would have preferred.
0 Comments