On one of my Costa Rica photo tours, my group and I were lucky enough to see a margay, a rarely seen nocturnal jungle cat. It is smaller than an ocelot but just as beautiful. I don't like to use flash or even fill flash with wildlife, but it was so dark in the rainforest that at the time I felt I had no choice. This was taken in 2009 with the Canon 5D Mark II, and noise was a significant issue with that camera so I didn't want to raise the ISO too high. Hence, the use of flash. I balanced the light on the cat with the background and just had time to take a few pictures before the margay was gone. In balancing flash exposure with ambient light, you have to adjust the two types of illumination separately. Use the flash exposure compensation feature on the flash and the ambient light exposure compensation on the camera. These controls are independent of each other, and together they will give you a correct exposure as seen on the LCD monitor on the back of the camera. My settings were 1/160, f/5.0, 320 ISO, and I used a 70-200mm lens because the cat was quite close.
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