The Fishing Focus

I captured this portrait of a fishing Black Bear earlier this month while leading one of my annual "Into the Great Bear Rainforest" photo tours. At the time this very healthy-looking bear was making its way down a salmon stream and stopping every few minutes to stare into the water looking for spawning pink salmon. Often the bear would absolutely freeze and remain completely still for several seconds (sometimes up to half a minute) and watch for any "suspicious" movement or ripples on the surface - just like shown here! This bear was definitely no rookie at fishing - whenever it did see a salmon and rushed at the unfortunate fish it invariably ended up with a tasty salmon in its mouth!

We were in a very low-light situation when I shot this image and, at the time, I had a 500mm lens in my hands. Given the very low light and the focal length of the lens I was using, I knew that to get the shot I would have to do two things that put the quality of the image at risk - I had to stop down (to have enough DoF to ensure the bear's entire head was in sharp focus) and I had to "gamble" on using a reasonably slow shutter speed. This meant I ended up with an unenviable balance of exposure variables that, when combined with the 500mm lens I was hand-holding, wasn't particularly conducive to getting a quality shot: 1/250s @ f8 and ISO 12,800!

Since we entered the digital age of photography (and the cost of film went away!) I've adopted a "heck, why not try it?" attitude when shooting images that are "iffy". When using the latest top gear (such as a Nikon D5 or a Canon 1DxII) you can get away with allowing the ISO drift up to almost stratospheric levels. But, I have to say that when I shot this image at 1/250s and ISO 12,800 I was definitely thinking it would be relegated to the trash bin. And I was definitely happy I was wrong!

Subject: Fishing Black Bear (Ursus americanus) watching for salmon
Location: Great Bear Rainforest, northern BC coast, Canada
Camera: Nikon D5
Lens: Nikkor 500 f4E VR. Hand-held. VR on and in "Sport" mode.
Exposure: 1/250s @ f8; ISO 12,800. -1.3 stop compensation from matrix-metered exposure setting.
Crop: Almost full frame (less than 5% crop for compositional purposes)

A whote lot more info about this shot - including a 2400 pixel version it - can be found on my website using the link immediately below.

http://www.naturalart.ca/galleries/latest/detail_7.html

Comments and critiques welcomed - probably best to view the larger version prior to doing so!

Cheers...

Brad

PS: Like all wildlife images on my website and that I post on NPN, the subject is fully wild and completely unconstrained. Besides the potential impact of my presence, nothing has been done to intentionally alter or affect the ongoing behavior of the subject and, of course, there has been no use of any form of bait or other form of wildlife attractants (including vocalizations).