About the Author

David Dampier

Financial Manager

David left the bright lights of Johannesburg and a promising career as a chartered accountant to join the Londolozi Ranging team in 2009. After three years spent as a guide, during which he built up a formidable reputation as one of Londolozi's top ...

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7 Comments

on The Leopards of Londolozi # 6

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Lovely, lovely, LOVELY!!!!!!

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These shots are amazing, and although I love the bush – I’m a “point and shoot” camera lady (haha) so these tips are helpful and will hopefully sink in one day when I have my own larny camera 😉 thanks. Beautiful pictures.

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Amazing shots and a really great information on how to take these shots. Thanks so much for bringing Africa back to me in Vancouver Canada.

It is a great pleasure Nick, thank you for following the stories on these animals and for your comments. rich

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These shots leave me gasping – just stunning! I really struggle to get my head around the ISO settings and then add to that you have a high ISO setting and then underexpose – if you don’t mind, can you explain this – I am really battling with my compact which has the ability to change all these things, (much more limited than SLR), but I have just had some disastrous results from using high ISO in low light and until I can get it right don’t feel I can justify the spend on an SLR! Am hoping to visit the bush again next year, so would be great if I could capture some shots half as good as these! Thanks so much for your wonderful inspiration and tips.

ISO settings can be simply understood by knowing that the lower your ISO (ie: 100) the less sensitive the camera will be to light, whilst the higher your ISO (ie: 2400) the more sensitive your camera will be to light at, however the expense of image quality. If you are photographing a leopard at dusk (low light), by increasing your ISO settings you are making the camera more sensitive to light and thus allowing for the shutter speed to increase. The result of which is a crisper, sharper image. What underexposing does to your pictures is heightens the darker tones. Many wildlife photographer will underexpose by a 1/3 or 2/3 as it gives the image a bit more contrast. I hope that helps..?

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Hi Rich, Thanks very much for explaining – that’s what I thought. I must say the image quality really decreased a lot – I was in the Outer Hebrides where it was cloudy and very poor light, so bumped the ISO up (max on my camera is 400) and it took a very snowy (believe the term is ‘noisy’) image, hence thinking I had misunderstood. The images are also quite blurry, but maybe it was cause of the gale force winds! LOL. Thanks for your help and explaining, I will try it again and try as you suggest with underexposing. Maybe I should forget the Outer Hebrides and just get back into the bush and play there! Again thank you sincerely for bringing the wonderful bush to those of us who live far away (even though South African!). All the best x

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