Leopard | Bandipur

[Bibhav Behera]

Shot this in Bandipur a few days back. This is a cropped image from a horizontal. I missed the paw in this one but the other ones lack eye contact. :-)

In the excitement didnt get time to switch the lens onto the 5D mk III for a slightly wider view.

Canon EOS 7D, 420mm
SS 1/40 (+0.3)
F/5.6
ISO 400

Comments and critiques welcome.

[Mrudul Godbole]

Lovely sighting. Liked the way it is resting its head and looking. Good eye contact. Was it so close? How long was the sighting? Thanks for sharing.

[Bibhav Behera]

It was around 30 meters away. This is however a cropped image from the sides, the vertical component of the frame is intact. We saw it for around 5 minutes before it got spooked when another vehicle came in noisily close.

[Sabyasachi Patra]

It is good that you saw a leopard. The eye contact is nice. The depth of field due to f5.6 is low. The critical focus is slightly ahead on the branch. I prefer the branch being in focus, as the left side vertical branches frame well. However, that means the leopard is not covered by depth of field. So increasing the ISO by a stop and aperture to f8 would have given you some more portions of the head in focus. Thanks for sharing.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Murugan Anantharaman]

Looks very relaxed. It feels nice to see animals look relaxed in their natural habitat. Agree with Sabyasachi, getting both the trunk and the leopard in focus would have enhanced this further. Thanks for sharing.