Watching a mother lion with her cub is so sweet, so endearing, and often so comical that it's a thrill to photograph them. I captured this interaction shortly before sunset, and the light was quite low due to a thick cloud cover. Therefore, I had no choice but to use a high ISO in order to use a decent shutter speed. First and foremost, the speed of the shutter has to be fast enough to freeze movement for a sharp picture. Sharpness trumps everything including the desire for depth of field and the need for a noise-free picture. If you use a small aperture for extensive depth of field and a low ISO for a minimum of digital noise, that forces the shutter to be long. In this kind of situation, that's a formula for blurred images and then the shots are ruined. I took this with the 100-400mm Canon zoom using 10 frames per second with the 7D Mark II, and my settings were 1/320, f/5.6, and 2500 ISO. I really wanted a faster shutter to be safe, but the cats weren't moving that much and I thought I could get a sharp picture with 1/320th of a second.
2 Comments
Aug 15, 2016, 7:17:08 AM
Jim - Thanks for your feedback, Bob. I always like sharing my thinking when I take pictures.
Aug 15, 2016, 1:02:25 AM
Bob Vestal - Jim, great image showing behavior of mom and cub. Always appreciate your tips that give rationale for your exposure choices, especially your point this time that freezing movement trumps DOF and iso.