She looks at me..!!!

[Dipankar Mazumdar]

Tigress from the Zone-2 of the RNP. We were positioned on a rocky outcrop and this tigress was walking down the hill facing us. She paused momentarily to look at us and then continued down to the water hole.

This was at the end of the morning safari and the light was beginning to get harsh.

EOS 50D + 300f4 @ f8, 1/500, ISO 1000

Look forward to comments.

Cheers
Dipankar

[Bhargava Srivari]

I like the angle. A slightly wider aperture would have been better, say f6.3 Also, ISO 1000 was not needed...you say light was good (harsh means there was more light than needed)..so iso 200 or even iso 100 would have sufficed!

A slight boost in contrast, maybe? All said, a very enjoyable frame.

Bhargava

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Lovely eye contact. Nice pose.

Harsh light means deeper shadows. So there is more contrast. Exposure becomes a challenge as the same scene has bright as well as shadow areas. One needs to expose to the right without blowing up the highlights and hoping that the dark areas (in this case the face) is sufficiently lighted.

The evaluative meter reading of Canon generally does a good job. A slight tweaking here and there brings out the best.

I agree with the shutter speed of 1/500 as the tiger was moving. The f8 aperture saved this image due to the higher depth of field than a f5.6 or f6.3 aperture. When you are shooting in these situations, the camera AF locks on to the high contrast areas. It will not lock on to the face, but will lock on to the bright area like the shoulder. Having a sufficient depth of field often saves the day. So I agree that f8 is better here. (If you would have selected f6.3, then the ISO would have become 640. )

Since the face is not lit, the eyes become dark so one needs to pull up the shadows. However, there is a limit to which one can pull up shadows. Thanks for sharing.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Mrudul Godbole]

Lovely eye contact. Its nice to see her coming towards you. Good details. Sharp. Thanks for sharing.

[Dipankar Mazumdar]

@ Bhargava,

In the frenzy of a Tiger sighting specially if it is on the move i prefer to switch on the auto ISO function, this is my safe mode as the camera makes sure a higher shutter speed is implemented and the only possible shot is passable. Of course, it is at the cost of a higher image quality which would have resulted should I have chosen a lower ISO.

Cheers
Dipankar