Wild Encounters: Leopard vs Hyena
This will be the start of our monthly Wild Encounters series and I would like to share a story that happened in 2016 after five weeks of incredible expeditions through Southern Africa. On our last night of the expedition, in Sabi Sabi, we were on the lookout for leopards, and we came across this gorgeous female feeding on a bushbuck. Watch the video to see what happened next in the dark of night.
Capture Info
Photo taken on 2016 Mozambique & Sabi Sabi Expedition by Thomas Baechtold
Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark III / Lens: Canon 70-200mm f2.8 / ISO: 4000 F-stop: f3.5 Speed: 1/160
It's tough to shoot at night, and I'm not a big fan of flash photography, I much prefer using ambient natural light. In low light, it's important to shoot with a high ISO number, which allows more flexibility with speed/f-stop; however, the picture does get grainier the higher the ISO number.
The guide's big spotlight not only helped give enough light but also created a nice focus, spotlighting the main subject. As you can see, the video unfortunately gets blurry as the Hyena grabs the Bushbuck and comes towards me, as I had it set on a small f-stop and focused further away. Still, I didn't want to change it midway through the action, as I felt it was vital to capture this incredible moment and story. Nowadays, cameras have an auto-focus-tracking mode to keep the focus locked on the main subject, which should help avoid this problem.