The otter image I posted yesterday is one of my favorites from the Pantanal, but the most exciting of all on this photo tour are the jaguars. Jaguars are much larger and more powerful than leopards, and they hunt mostly in the water. 70% of their diet is caiman, the south American alligator. Even though photographers can get fairly close to the big cats, I typically use a 500mm Canon f/4 telephoto plus a 1.4x teleconverter for tight closeups like what you see here. There have been several occasions, though, when I had to switch to a 100-400mm because a jaguar will swim across the river right in front of our boat. This shot was taken with a 700mm focal length, and the settings were 1/2500, f/5.6, and 3200 ISO. I use fast shutter speeds in the Pantanal because it's important to freeze the movements of the animals and birds and also because we always shoot from a boat.
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