Forest King

Gallery: WildlifePosted February 24, 2013372 views7 comments

Here's something I brought back from my trip last year to Mana Pools which required some processing work. You will need to click on the larger file here, but even 1200px wide is not enough to do this one justice. It's a panoramic stitch of 19 images shot in portrait orientation (vertically) with a super telephoto lens. Luckily the lion lay still for a while to enable me to do this...

With most of my Mana portfolio I really tried to give context to the scene - showing the absolutely beautiful surroundings of the wildlife that inhabit this pristine location.

I know it's a tad tight at the bottom but I composed my shots specifically to exclude the dirt track road that ran past the lion in the immediate foreground.

The full resolution file is 9276x4028 pixels (37 megapixels) and I am having it printed 2 meters wide on metallic place for my home soon.

Techs:
Nikon D3s
Nikkor 500mm f4 VR-II
1.4x teleconverter
f5.6 | 1/250 SS | ISO-2500
Beanbag supported out of vehicle window
19 images stitched (portrait format)

Comments

7 comments

Comment posted by Gary Gulash on February 24, 2013 at 3:58 PM

Cool image Morkel. The lion looks very content in his environment, he seems almost incidental. The trees are very stately and you have a very nice mix of light and shadow in the background. What an excellent choice for a large pano, great idea that I would like to try someday if the circumstances cooperated. I looked at the techs and wondered why 2500 iso, but then a shutter speed of 1/250 is probabably as slow as you should go with this kind of telephoto reach. Did you use the photoshop stitching program or something else? Thanks Morkel.

Registered on January 28, 2005, 879 Posts, 12098 Comments

Comment posted by Morkel Erasmus on February 24, 2013 at 4:03 PM

Thanks Gary. The light was still low - you can see the sun starting to penetrate the patch of forest behind him, hence the high ISO and the slow SS. Ideally I would have liked to shoot at f8 but that would have increased ISO another full stop, and yes 1/250 was as slow as I could go for sharp images in this instance.

I stitched in Photoshop CS5 using the "Merge to Pano" option directly out of LR4.

Registered on March 22, 2011, 385 Posts, 2068 Comments

Comment posted by Michael Cothran on February 24, 2013 at 5:16 PM

Very nice. This is an instance where the subject being fairly small in the overall composition actually works to your favor. It appears that the bottom section is similar across the image, so you might be able to add a little canvas down there more easily, should you desire.

Registered on December 5, 2012, 31 Posts, 730 Comments

Comment posted by Ajit Huilgol on February 25, 2013 at 12:18 AM

Why would you not use a 70-200 to get the surroundings you wanted to include, and also to get in 2 or 3 landscape format shots and stitch them together? Why the 500? Was the lion too far for a 70-200? I'm curious to know.

Registered on December 19, 2008, 302 Posts, 2055 Comments

Comment posted by William Bickle on February 25, 2013 at 1:53 PM

Hello Morkel

Always Enjoy & look forward to Viewing your Images, with a running descriptive commentary.
Lovely setting & well Captured !! Interesting take on the Pano,
Lion seems to be main subject , I feel too centered and would be even more pleasing to be Off Centre some.

Thanks for sharing.

Bill

Registered on June 13, 2011, 183 Posts, 1702 Comments

Comment posted by Morkel Erasmus on February 25, 2013 at 3:46 PM

Thanks for the varied feedback, folks.

To answer Ajit - I had the 70-200mm there but it left the lion too small in the frame and didn't provide the separation from the background that I was after. The super telephoto proved to get the effect I was after here, even though it required some more PP work

I liked the lion central here, mostly because I wanted as much of the environment in as possible - hope it makes sense?

Registered on March 22, 2011, 385 Posts, 2068 Comments

Comment posted by Sandipan Dutta on March 9, 2013 at 4:37 AM

Love the way you managed to show the habitat here. Great execution!!!

Registered on March 9, 2009, 171 Posts, 493 Comments