Ashura National Park in Tanzania is home to the Colobus Monkeys. A kind of monkey I have never seen before. Here they live in the section of the park that is rain foresty. They live in the canopy of the forest. Since the rain forest tends to be darkish with minimal sunlight intrusion, photography can be tricky. Light that gets through the canopy causes blotches of light here and there. That with the darkish forest causes too much dynamic range for a camera to handle. Having never photographed in such conditions the opportunity excited me. After some driving we found the monkeys.

They sat reasonably still, so low shutter speeds due to the darkish forest scene did not cause focus sharpness issues. It was fun to watch them move about in the forest. I was amazed to see them jump. Apparently they have not fear of heights or risk. They are high up in the trees and just jump great distances to get to another tree. Obviously, getting such a jumping image became my goal. But here is where photographic challenges started.

          Jumping monkeys move fast. Fast movement in darkish conditions leaves us with little choice. We have to get the image sharp, which means a fast shutter speed. However, a fast shutter speed is not possible in darkish conditions. Regardless of consequences to noise, I cranked up the ISO. I wanted that shot. But catching that image inside the forest proved near impossible from the confines of a vehicle.

Then it happened! We witnessed them jump across the road. They were high up in the trees and simply jumped from one tree to the next, right over the road. So we waited for more of them to jump, and we were rewarded:

You can see from the dull cloudy sky that the light levels were low. If you want to find out how I deal with noisy images check out the blog I wrote about that recently - there is amazing software that deals with that. We waiting and were rewarded yet again.

This was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. Photographically speaking this experience reiterated the point that getting a sharp image is more important than getting a noise free image. Noise can be removed, an out of focus image is not salvageable. As photographers we often deal with tradeoffs. We have to make tough decisions. Never compromise on getting the image in focus, most other tradeoffs have software and or editing solutions.