The Pantanal is the only place I know where you can consistently see and photograph jaguars in the wild. These impressive cats, who are significantly larger than leopards, live by rivers to hunt mostly caiman and capybara. Photographers covet action shots the most, of course, but I also like intimate portraits. Resting on a bank above the serpentine river my photo tour groups use to search for the big cats, this large male was in full view and apparently not camera shy. Usually I use a 500mm focal length because this is enough to fill the frame for impactful images. In this case, though, I used a 500mm lens plus a 2x teleconverter giving me 1000mm of focal length. My settings were 1/640, f/11, and 1000 ISO. I took this picture 10. years ago, and if I were to approach the same situation now, where noise is less of a problem, I would have increased the shutter speed to 1250th of a second and raised the ISO to 2000.
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