We had three different jaguar sightings this morning here in the Pantanal -- it was truly incredible -- and I was particularly excited to find the two brothers again. Two days ago I posted a picture of one of the two siblings. I didn’t include both of them because they were sitting too far apart for a strong image. Today, though, I got what I wanted. They were sitting next to each other exhibiting the intimacy of their friendship. I photographed them from several angles as the river current moved the boat, and each perspective looks great. This is my favorite shot of the series. I took this with a 500mm lens plus a 1.4x teleconverter giving me 700mm of focal length, and my settings were 1/2000, f/5.6, and 1250 ISO. I used a fast shutter even though the jaguars were essentially motionless because with this kind of telephoto magnification, any movement appears huge in the viewfinder. Hand holding a long lens in a moving boat meant the image was bobbing up and down as I tried to compose the picture. Only a fast shutter guaranteed a sharp image.
2 Comments
Nov 9, 2018, 3:09:44 AM
Jim - Hi Bob, Yes, experience. The two heads were touching, so i wasn't worried about that. I was more concerned with the hind ends and the feet. But the distance I was shooting from was sufficient to give me confidence that I'd have enough dof. Again, that was experience. I could have been wrong, but in this case I wasn't
Nov 9, 2018, 12:04:11 AM
Bob Vestal - Great shot! Really tells the story of their close relationship. I am a little surprised that f/5.6 gave you enough DOF to get fully sharp image of the animals front to back at that distance with 700 mm focal length. How did you know that you would not need f/8 or f/11. Just experience?