When photographing animals (or people) in motion, one of the things that makes or breaks the pictures is the position of the legs. How they are bent or extended makes all the difference. With so many things to think about every time you take a picture, it can be difficult to concentrate on the leg positions during peak action. Every millisecond they change, especially if the subjects are moving quickly. Therefore, I use high speed continuous shooting to capture all the nuances of the movement. I can then select the best one(s) later. This mother and baby elephant crossed a dry river bed at Sabi Sabi in South Africa quickly, and at 10 frames per second I captured a leg position that I liked. I took this two years ago when I was still using the Canon 7D Mark II, and therefore I tried to keep the ISO low to prevent too much noise. Here I used 800 ISO with a shutter speed of 1/320 at f/6.3 and a 400mm focal length.
6 Comments
Jul 11, 2017, 12:05:17 AM
Jim - Hi Lorraine, The trees on the left side are approximately the same distance to the camera as the elephants. In other words, they are basically on the same plane. Thus, both in focus. The trees behind the mother's head were further away, hence the reason they are out of focus.
Jul 10, 2017, 11:06:09 PM
Jim - Thanks, Bob. I'm glad you found my comments helpful.
Jul 10, 2017, 10:18:15 PM
Bob Vestal - Love the young elephant and mom. Never really thought about leg position, but will try to do so in the future at least during editing.
Jul 10, 2017, 9:25:38 PM
Lorraine Piskin - Jim:
With a f6.3 you had enough DF to blur the background.,.however the left side of the picture is sharp while the front of where their heads are the trees are blurred and I'm wondering how that happened. Love that picture!
Lorraine
Jul 10, 2017, 12:13:01 PM
Jim - Thanks very much, Maria.
Jul 10, 2017, 11:59:40 AM
Maria - What a great and sweet picture, Jim.