C&C Fox cub's

Muineach

hi all,
well the cubs came out, this photo below is really annoying me. I've done some work with exposure etc. but any time I look at it, I keep thinking something is wrong but I can't put my finger on it, any ideas ?

Taken at 300mm, f5.6 and shutter at 1/30 hand held, I tried using a tripod but with them moving around a lot it becomes more awkward to use.

Paulw

Very nice. I'm sure you're going to have many hours of great photography with them.

nilhg

I think you might have to crop this, with them so close to the briars it impossible to get any seperation of them from the background, and the tangle of briars to the right does nothing for the shot.

I you wanted you could try leaving small titbits to tempt them out a litttle, probably just finish up feeding the crows though.

AnimalRights

Lovely creatures.

Muineach

nilhg wrote: »

I think you might have to crop this, with them so close to the briars it impossible to get any seperation of them from the background, and the tangle of briars to the right does nothing for the shot.

Yea I'll try and crop this a bit, as pups they won't come out far at all, plus where I take the shots from there is a 5 foot drop down into a dried up stream, so if they go down there they wont get back up without the mother, as for the other side it's all brambles and trees, plus you'd be shooting in the shadows by the time they come out.

It is hard to see them in the shot, especially the "small dude" coming over the top, I suppose that's the way evolution made them, hard to spot. I'm not too worried, but it's great sitting out watching them.

Covey

Looking forward to the rest of these.

Buy a monopod

AnimalRights

Muineach wrote: »

It is hard to see them in the shot, especially the "small dude" coming over the top

No problems at all spotting him tbh.....
How long do you wait at this Foxes den then?

Muineach

AnimalRights wrote: »

No problems at all spotting him tbh.....

well I've made him more visible that in "real life" to try and bring him out in the photo's.
The cubs seem to come out at about 8:30 give or take 10 minutes, more or less just as the sun goes down off the den, as well it's understandable.

AnimalRights

Be nice to also see the original picture too.

Muineach

here are the originals, I selected these shots due to the fact that you could see the cub's, the first one is a crop off another shot to try and show how well the camouflage works, bear in mind that without the camera you would be seeing this from about 30 foot away.

AnimalRights

I like the originals, makes ya feel the cubs nervousness/seclusion.

Muineach

I eventually worked out what was wrong, it was way too bright, the photo below is the type of light I had that day, I don't know why it took me so long to work it out.

I had set the camera to be on "Av" and had set the aperture on the lowest/highest setting f5.6, so that the camera would judge the shutter speed, then last night (roughly same level of light) I did it manually, much better results, I kept the shutter speed at 1/80 and dropped down to ISO800 and just kept checking the images on the back to see if the light level dropped off. In fairness the photo's now have the "same" as what I see down at the den. if that makes any sense