Polar bear

Nice moment.

Molto bella!

An exquisite catch with superior sharpness and white balance. Shooting something white on white is a paint in the ass :)

How could you even shoot it from that close?? Regards, VS

Thanks for your comments!

Vjacheslav: it was shot from a zodiac during a recent photo boat trip in Svalbard. We were extremely lucky to be able to follow this young male polar bear along the shore during more than 1.5 hour in a fantastic evening light (although I would have dreamt of a more diffuse light). Such an encounter is not usual in the winter. At some point I had to use my 5D (full frame) instead of the 7D with the 500mm because I couldn't put the bear in the frame anymore... We were really lucky!

National Geographic quality. Superb.

Beautiful light and shadows, well captured.

Alain,

Excellent work!

I' m just curious,how 5d or 7d worked in winter conditions?

Regards,

ZT

Thanks for your comments! Zbigniew: both bodies worked perfectly above -20°C. Below this temperature (it dropped to -27°C one night), what I could notice is a kind of "trembling" display of focus points in the viewfinder. Moving the selection of one focus point to another took more time than usual and was a bit complicated because of the "trembling" display. I didn't shoot any moving subject when temperature was < -20°C, so I'm not sure, but I don't think the autofocus performance were affected. Only the display in the viewfinder was, I would say. Concerning batteries: I had 2 batteries for each body, but despite the cold I never had to change a battery during the day because it got empty.

Great capture!

I am impressed ... Excellent picture Alain! Kind Regards, Rosario!

Great lighting and all, wonderfully composed! Cheers to that, Alain! PDE