The Final Explosive Leap

[Debasis Bose]

The challenge of the tigress was to get as close as possible to the herd of the deer by melting into the grass with stealth and then make the final ambush with speed to make the kill. This shot was clicked when the tigress broke her cover and gave the final leap towards the herd to deer. On extreme left head of deer stag and doe can be seen, which the tigress was aiming for.

It is a record shot though quality of the image is not so good due to low light (5.15 pm on the 23rd Dec 2015) and extremely fast action shot. I opened up the aperture to 2.8 and pushed the ISO to 500 to get exposure of 1/320s at 125mm on 70-200 f2.8 lens and managed to keep the focus on the tiger's head/neck.

Would like to know what would have been the best camera settings for such action under low light condition.

[Mrudul Godbole]

Lucky you could witness this natural history moment. Was the tigress able to make the kill?

Were you hand holding? In low light when the shutter speed is not high, it is best to use a tripod or a bean bag. You could have tried to raise the ISO further to say 800 or 1000, as these days the noise levels are not much and in some situations you can do with the noise. This was a tough scene, as focussing here was difficult as the tigress was running through the tall grass, and it is very much possible that the AF point may get locked on the grass.

I would have used a slight narrower aperture say 5.6 (to get slight more depth of field) with a higher ISO to give a shutter speed of at least 1/100 and tried to rest the camera on the gypsy or a bean bag or even a jacket (I have done that a few times) and waited for a moment when the tigress is slight more in the open (if possible). Thanks for sharing.

[Saktipada Panigrahi]

Nice portrayal of the natural hunting scene.The tigress, it seems to me, has judged by now that she will miss the prey and therefore, is not willing to waste stored energy any more.
Debashis Bhai, our ears and eyes for fresh Corbett stories, may tell us what exactly happened. Thanks for sharing. SaktiWild

[Debasis Bose]

Dear Saktida, your skills of analysis and apprehension are abnormally accurate. You are right the tigress by this time realized she missed a golden opportunity. I was unable to post the video of entire hunting, finally connected it through the tools above to the FB upload, but seems one of the moderator had removed it. If anyone can guide me how to upload individual video, there are some incredible clips of natural history recorded during my several visits to Corbett, which would love to share with all. Regards Debasis

[Roopak Gangadharan]

Lovely...no image can do justice to that moment. But to me a freeze like this better captures the essence of that moment nd of life and times in the jungle that many technically better images, which just show the animal or bird and nothing else will never be able to. A good image of a moment like that will of course be fantastic….
TFS
Roopak

[Rajan Kanagasabai]

Lovely action scene - a rare one in the wilds and you were lucky to be at the right place and the right time.

On the camera settings, i can think of two possibilities. (1) As Mrudul says, a lower aperture (say F4 or f5.6) with a higher shutter speed (by boosting up the ISO higher) would give you a luxury of a higher shutter speed - an important factor for action frames. Couple this with a bean bag and that is option 1. (2) The second option that i can think of is a panning shot, where you follow the direction of the tiger with the camera while shooting. This may have the animal in focus, but will blur out the background, which will give the whole frame a sense of speed . . .

Thanks for sharing

regards
Rajan

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Tough scene. In such situations it is more important to get the shot and you can bother about noise later. If I have to choose between sharpness and low noise then I will always prefer sharpness. In low light situations it is very important to get the shutter speed high. Shooting wide as you did here ie at 125mm to get the tiger and the sambar is fine. I think ISO 1000 would have been better as it would have given you 1/640s shutter speed and that would have helped in capturing the scene in a much better way.

If there is no way that you can get higher shutter speed than panning the camera along the direction of the motion will help while keeping the focus on the subject. Thanks for sharing.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi