Canon 400D catches two male leopards: But poor camera placement affects the image..!
A black and yellow phase leopard caught on trail cam
After the dry season when the first monsoon rains arrived here in Thailand this year, I decided to go back to my old stomping grounds where tigers, leopards and other Asian species travel back and forth down a wildlife trail deep in the Western Forest Complex of Thailand. Last year, a bull gaur charged me not too far from this location and it still brings shivers down my spine when I look back on that incident. However, it is one of my favorite sites to catch the denizens of the Thai forest on camera traps.
Spotted leopard caught in the afternoon.
A couple months ago, I pulled out my first DSLR trail cam that had been rumbling around in my truck for sometime. It’s a Canon 400D with a Nikon 50mm manual lens that uses an external hard-wired SSII (Snapshotsniper) sensor and three hard-wired Nikon SB-28 flashes. The camera is housed in a Pelican 1150 encased in one of my ‘elephant proof’ aluminum boxes and firmly bolted to a tree just by the trail. When I set the cam, it was pointing a bit high and the framing was off. Of course I did not notice it at the time of installation. I recently posted somewhere that sometimes if takes a little experimentation and adjustment to get the composition just right. This is one of those times…!
Black leopard caught in the morning.
The cam has been on that tree for almost two months now, and I decided to go and service it. A female muntjac (barking deer) had passed but on August 22nd at 3.40pm, a yellow phase leopard passed the Canon that ripped off six quick shots. Then on August 28th at 8.26am, a black leopard got caught going the other way and tripped the cam for another 6-shots. Funny enough, both cats are males. For some reason, the flashes were not powerful enough and the images of the black leopard are underexposed with loads of noise. I have tweaked them a bit but they are what they are; good record shots.
Common red muntjac or barking deer female
A female on the run…!
I have re-adjusted the cam for better framing and put in another flash near the sensor down low (switched to radio flash triggers). Hopefully that will lighten things up a bit in the target area. Replaced the batteries, card and desiccant, and tested the system. Seems to be working OK. This highway in the forest should produce more mammals as they go about their daily lives. I now have four DSLRs working in this forest: a Nikon D700 at the ‘tiger log’ and a Nikon D90 just up the trail a bit, plus another Canon 400D at another location and then this Canon. Hope to get one of my Canon 600Ds and a couple Sony DSLRs going soon with different locations and composition. Enjoy…!
