Black Leopard or Panther ? Before I started to photograph and research the big cats, I used to call the black cat a “panther. However there is no actual specie called black panther, this is just the name commonly given to a melanistic leopard with an excess of the dark pigment melanin, resulting in an almost totally black coat although the markings will still show up against the background in certain lights. So usually what we all call “panther” is actually a black Leopard (or black jaguar) :) In this set of photos, stood with the sun at my back, shading her light right on the black leopards. In this case in order to reach a color balanced photo I had to overcome the sunlight. In cases like this where I have a very dark object in the photo, I take the reading from the object and use the partial metering option. Since I use RAW images I also used a -2 exposure compensation so the darker object (black leopard) which was my reference point could be seen without losing any of her details. to capture these photos, I used the following lenses and parameters. If any of you have a specific question on how I capture them, feel free to ask specifically :) Nikon D800 Nikon 200-400 f/4.0 Nikon 70-200 f/2.8 Nikon 24-70 f/2.8 48mm-400mm f/4.0-f/7.1 1/320-1/1250 ISO 200-320 #africa #wildlife #leopard #black #panther
Posted on: Sun, 08 Jun 2014 16:26:39 +0000