Photographing black fur

The challenge with photographing very dark or black animals, like these black bear cubs, is retaining detail in their hair or fur. The two ideal lighting conditions that allow this detail to show well are diffused light from an overcast sky and low angled sunlight. As soon as contrast increases, like from an overhead sun, the shadows go dark and much of the detail is lost. Even with ideal lighting, though, in post-processing the shadows slider in ACR or Lightroom has to be used to reveal as much detail as possible. With film, we never had a capability like this, but with our digital images the ability to hold detail is miraculous. My settings for this shot were 1/250, f/4.5, and 800 ISO.