Zebras in the landscape, Tanzania.

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve presented mostly close up wildlife shots,  today I thought I’d take a different tack and show some wildlife within the context of the landscape.  The first shot was taken in Tarangire National Park whilst the second one was in Ngorongoro Crater a couple of days later.    Notice that in the first shot the zebras are up to their bellies in grass,  whereas in the second shot the grass is quite a bit shorter.   Tarangire is a fairly open landscape whereas Ngorongoro, being a crater,  is more enclosed and more heavily grazed.

Cropping factors.

Both shots were taken with a Canon 20D SLR.   The 20D is a reduced frame camera with a cropping factor of 1.6x.   Notice it’s a “cropping” factor, not a “multiplying” factor as some people suggest.   Some people are under the impression that,  if you use a lens of say 100mm on a camera with a cropping factor/multiplying factor of 1.6,  the lens then behaves like a 160mm focal length on a full-frame camera,  not correct.   The depth of field characteristics of the lens don’t change,  but the angle of view changes.   The effect is the same as if you use a full-frame camera and then crop the image after the event.

Sharpening in Photoshop.

A little while ago I commented on the use of digital sharpening in Photoshop,  indeed I presented an article with some examples on my main site.   Regular readers may recall an architectural shot I took in Antigua, Guatemala, and presented, unsharpened,  on this blog a couple of months ago.   I commented at the time on artifacting that digital sharpening introduced in really fine details (window shutters) in that image.   The same effect was evident when processing the first image here.   With the zebras small in the frame,  their stripes appear really closely spaced together and so sharpening,  at what I regard as normal levels,  produced really bizarre looking artifact.   For those that are using Photoshop and are interested,  the image was given smart sharpening at 50% and 1.0 pixel radius, normally I would consider 150% and 1.5 pixel radius as a starting point for most images.

As usual,  if anyone has any comments or questions, fire away.     Cheers KD.

Zebras in the landscape, Tarangire National Park, Tanzania.  Canon 20D with 24-105mm zoom lens at 28mm,  shutter speed 1/125 second at F11,  ISO 100.
Zebras in the landscape, Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania.  Canon 20D with 24-105mm zoom lens at 24mm,  shutter speed 1/320 second at F7.1,  ISO 200.

More images can be seen in the Tanzania image gallery.