Sighting of a lifetime - Jungle Cat

[Supreet Sahoo]

When you miss a tiger in the wild (with cubs) its not a good feeling, unless of course you get to spend 45 mins with a beauty like this one.
Specs:
EOS 7D+300mm f/4L IS USM +1.4x
SS1/2500
F10
EV -2/3
ISO 800

[Bhargava Srivari]

Nicely composed. The habitat looks good. Wish you had better eye contact though.

tfs

[Bhargava Srivari]

I had forgotten to mention that a lower ISO would have been just fine even if you were to capture some action, like the cat trying to make a kill.

Cheers

[Saktipada Panigrahi]

Very very rare sighting.Lovely photograph.Even black ear tip and markings on foreleg have come well.The pose reminds us that it it exceedingly strong (and swift) for its size.Thanks for sharing.SaktiWild

[Mrudul Godbole]

Nice that you sighted it in the open. I liked the pose and the eye contact. Sighting it for 45 mins it surely quite lucky. Look forward to see more in the series. Thanks for sharing.

[Praveen Siddannavar]

Wow! Lovely sighting of this rare beauty, you are truly blessed to have sighted it for 45 mins. Nice composition
tfs

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Supreet,
Nice sighting. I like the pose and composition. There are some artifacts on the left of the frame near the cat. Similarly there are some artifacts at the right frame edge at the same level as the cat. Can you tell us what are those?

How much of crop is this and from which side?

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Supreet Sahoo]

Sabyasachi sir, this was cropped by a good 30% for framing. Since it was shot at high iso there was some noise evident in the frame which needed one round of despeckling. I guess the2 parts that you are referring to were probably missed during the process.

Having said that I'm pretty sure that the right side would be really difficult to miss considering the fact that it is at quite a distance from the actual subject. I can still understand the grass area being accidentally selected on the left of the feline.

-Supreet

Supreet,
Nice sighting. I like the pose and composition. There are some artifacts on the left of the frame near the cat. Similarly there are some artifacts at the right frame edge at the same level as the cat. Can you tell us what are those?

How much of crop is this and from which side?

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Bhargava Srivari]

My suspiscion of despeckling turns out be true after all (as I wrote on another forum, perhaps)

The best way to apply despeckling in Photoshop is to make a selection of the part of the image that is totally covered by the DoF (this part of the image doesn't show up too much noise usually), then invert the selection. Now, to this portion of the image, you may appy a round or two of despeckling depending on the level of noise. Despeckling this area usually will not affect the image as it is already OOF and doesn't have many details that are important.

Cheers