Dik-diks, another nomination for a member of the 'Little Five', are tiny African antelope. They are hard to photograph because they're very nervous and constantly moving. If you were eye-level with grass and had no claws and no fangs, and you were an easy meal for lots of predators, you’d be afraid of your own shadow, too! I’ve seen them on a number of occasions, but I was only able to get a decent shot once. I took this with a Canon 500mm f/4 telephoto along with a 2x teleconverter, giving me 1000mm of focal length. My settings were 1/320, f/9, and 400 ISO. I took this in 2007 when I was still using a Canon 5D Mark II, and back then noise was a much more serious consideration than it is today. I kept the ISO low to maintain a good quality image, but that forced my shutter to be slower than I would have preferred. The rule for choosing a shutter speed when using a telephoto lens is that the shutter should be the reciprocal of the focal length. In other words, with a 1000mm lens, the shutter should ideally be 1/1000th of a second or faster. With modern cameras, it’s easier to use faster speeds without so much concern for noise. This is particularly true with excellent noise reducing software that is available.
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