Friday 3 April 2009

Techniques-on board Flash for wildlife continued

Following on from Martins post yesterday I thought I would show my way of using flash with wildlife photography, Martin prefers the Manual exposure method whereas I like the AV method, When using flash in Manual the flash becomes the main light source whereas in AV or TV its just 'fill' lighting so where Martin needs to balance the flash with the ambient light to stop having a black background i simply need to compensate on the flash to stop over lighting the subject,When i used film/slide cameras in the past I found that by dialing in -1.7ev it gave perfect fill lighting,just enough to remove shadows and give a glint in the subjects eye,Today's sensors are more sensitive than film and i find that -2 1/3 is about right,obviously subject distance plays a part but at normal shooting distance like 6 metres with a 600mm lens this setting is good, At normal distances like this its not necessary to use a better beamer but i like to as it concentrates the light onto the subject, Its a powerful tool and you will need to practice with it and keep an eye on the histogram, Flash is good but too much flash where it is obvious can also ruin an image,
I am off to the Great Smokie Mountains next week and hope to get some wildlife,macro and landscape shooting in, I am leaving Sunday so will be spending the day travelling but will leave a few words on correcting colour casts for Martin to post

Dave










3 comments:

  1. Dave, Martin
    This is probably a dumb question but here goes.
    If I use the better beamer for fill flash ie using AV will the background be thrown more out of focus than without flash or will it be exactly the same as without flash.
    Thanks
    Pete

    ReplyDelete
  2. The camera will deal with the focus so that wont change but the bird/animal may appear to 'pop' more giving that effect

    Dave

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks dave
    Pete

    ReplyDelete