Posted by Nick Railton on September 21, 2007 at 5:47 PM
This is the 1st shot I have taken of a bird with flash, don't know what I'm doing with flash so any advice would be appreciated.
Techs:-
Canon 1D MKIII, 300mm f/2.8 IS, 2.0x Extender, 580EX II.
600 mm
Exposure 1/1000 at f/5.6
FlashFired, compulsory mode
Flash set to Highspeed Sync
Shutter priority
ISO400
Small crop, little sharpening.
Posted by Phil Shaw on September 22, 2007 at 1:35 AM
The flash looks OK - as it should, since in either Tv or Av mode, the camera is going to attempt to produce a balanced fill-flash effect. As for your other settings, I think you will get better results if you stop-down to at least f8, but better at f11, when you have the 2x fitted and also to obtain more depth of field when birds are close to the minimum focus distance. The softness in the plumage detail is probably due to the fairly poor resolution you get with the 2x when you shoot at wide appertures, rather than an AF error. Have you checked the focus adjustment on your Mk3 as it looks like it may be front-focusing a bit.
Posted by Andy Astbury on September 22, 2007 at 3:27 AM
Nick - the exposure looks pretty much spot-on to me
One thing I would suggest you do is buy a Better Beamer/Kirk Flash Extender - about £30 and invaluable.
Posted by Phil Shaw on September 22, 2007 at 7:31 AM
Andy, a better beamer is only going to be useful if the bird is more than about 15m away. I would say Nick's Greenfinch was considerably closer than that and at these distances an EX550/580 will deliver all the light you need, particularly if you are just looking for a fill-flash effect. In many of the images I see where a beamer has been used, the focused beam has completely missed the subject.
Posted by Nick Railton on September 22, 2007 at 7:48 AM
Thanks Andy, I had a brief read of the article looks interesting and not to complicated.
Phil, You are correct the Greenfinch was only about 4 metres away, I checked the focus of the 300mm + 2.0x using the battery method looks spot on to me, with all my lenses I have never needed to make use of the MKIII microadjustent function, I know a few MKIII users seem to have to dial in a lot of adjustment maybe they have faulty cameras?
Stopping down to f/11, if I use AV mode the shutter speed will be to slow so I guess I would need to use Manual and set the Shutter speed to say 1/500th and F/11, what do I do with the flash, dial in some + ev?
Cheers
Posted by Andy Astbury on September 22, 2007 at 10:33 AM
Nick and Phil - Phil - the Better Beamer will buy Nick at least 2 stops which he can then utilise for more DoF or higher shutter speed, I used it quite frequently with my old 500mm at the distances Nick is working, albeit with a -2.5ev comp dialled in - it gets more flashes from the battery pack!!!!
The only problem you have at short distances is 'parallax - type' error with the flash head ie: the flash will not be centered on the subject and maybe the light might be too harsh, but there's ways around both of those.
Nick - the more even the subject is lit the less fill flash you will require, and the more backlit the subject is the more fill you require. Harsh subject lighting will require more fill.
From -3ev to 0ev the shutterspeed you use (in high speed synch) will be somewhat irrelevent with regards the FLASH part of the exposure as the flash only fires once and it's duration is in 10000ths of a second.
Where things can get a bit pear-shaped is when using the +EV flash settings as the flash fires it full discharge (0ev) more than once ie at +1ev the tube discharges twice. at +2ev four times etc.
Rather than try and give you advice on flash comp settings you could take a look at the birdsasart.com bulletin archives - there's hundreds of images in there with all the exposure data, flash comp settings etc - if you take your time and look at the images and data you'll soon be able to formulate your own ideas about good starting points for almost any lighting situation you'll come accross - it's WAY better than trying to read about it.
'the Better Beamer will buy Nick at least 2 stops which he can then utilise for more DoF or higher shutter speed'
This is not really true.... we are surely looking at the flash as fill, in which case the ambient exposure takes precedence and the flash becomes a fraction of that. Up to the 15 metre point then the flash gun really needs no help, over that, it does, which is where a BB comes to your aid....
The trick is to balance ambient and artificial, but for things to look natural ambient has to be predominant.....
All the best
BTW the image looks good Nick
Phil
Posted by Andy Astbury on September 23, 2007 at 4:04 AM
Phil - I don't want to hijack Nicks thread here, but I wasn't suggesting that the BB would give better results at these distances - if that's how it came across then I need to write properly
A BB is not vital at these distances and it won't give any advantage save the one I pointed out - a bit of power saving.
But it won't do any harm either and for £30 it's always useful to have - and if you happen to be a Nikon user the one for the SB800 is a pig to attach and line-up properly so basically mine is virtually 'fixed' to my Nikon flash - that's how I know it does not impede fill flash on small birds at short distances.
Basically Phil if you've got a flash then your ought to get a BB for it as a matter of course - I've just bought a 580EXII for my Canon body and picked up the BB for it at the same time - I'm astonished how well it fits, wish it did the same on the SB800 version
Ohh.and yes Phil, I do know what balanced fill flash is, I've been doing it since 1978, when everything was manual only and you used to stack layers of Sellotape across the flash - ohhh happy days
Discussion
8 repliesTechs:-
Canon 1D MKIII, 300mm f/2.8 IS, 2.0x Extender, 580EX II.
600 mm
Exposure 1/1000 at f/5.6
FlashFired, compulsory mode
Flash set to Highspeed Sync
Shutter priority
ISO400
Small crop, little sharpening.
There's an interesting article about high speed synch here http://www.naturescapes.net/082006/rp0806.htm
One thing I would suggest you do is buy a Better Beamer/Kirk Flash Extender - about £30 and invaluable.
Phil, You are correct the Greenfinch was only about 4 metres away, I checked the focus of the 300mm + 2.0x using the battery method looks spot on to me, with all my lenses I have never needed to make use of the MKIII microadjustent function, I know a few MKIII users seem to have to dial in a lot of adjustment maybe they have faulty cameras?
Stopping down to f/11, if I use AV mode the shutter speed will be to slow so I guess I would need to use Manual and set the Shutter speed to say 1/500th and F/11, what do I do with the flash, dial in some + ev?
Cheers
The only problem you have at short distances is 'parallax - type' error with the flash head ie: the flash will not be centered on the subject and maybe the light might be too harsh, but there's ways around both of those.
Nick - the more even the subject is lit the less fill flash you will require, and the more backlit the subject is the more fill you require. Harsh subject lighting will require more fill.
From -3ev to 0ev the shutterspeed you use (in high speed synch) will be somewhat irrelevent with regards the FLASH part of the exposure as the flash only fires once and it's duration is in 10000ths of a second.
Where things can get a bit pear-shaped is when using the +EV flash settings as the flash fires it full discharge (0ev) more than once ie at +1ev the tube discharges twice. at +2ev four times etc.
Rather than try and give you advice on flash comp settings you could take a look at the birdsasart.com bulletin archives - there's hundreds of images in there with all the exposure data, flash comp settings etc - if you take your time and look at the images and data you'll soon be able to formulate your own ideas about good starting points for almost any lighting situation you'll come accross - it's WAY better than trying to read about it.
'the Better Beamer will buy Nick at least 2 stops which he can then utilise for more DoF or higher shutter speed'
This is not really true.... we are surely looking at the flash as fill, in which case the ambient exposure takes precedence and the flash becomes a fraction of that. Up to the 15 metre point then the flash gun really needs no help, over that, it does, which is where a BB comes to your aid....
The trick is to balance ambient and artificial, but for things to look natural ambient has to be predominant.....
All the best
BTW the image looks good Nick
Phil
A BB is not vital at these distances and it won't give any advantage save the one I pointed out - a bit of power saving.
But it won't do any harm either and for £30 it's always useful to have - and if you happen to be a Nikon user the one for the SB800 is a pig to attach and line-up properly so basically mine is virtually 'fixed' to my Nikon flash - that's how I know it does not impede fill flash on small birds at short distances.
Basically Phil if you've got a flash then your ought to get a BB for it as a matter of course - I've just bought a 580EXII for my Canon body and picked up the BB for it at the same time - I'm astonished how well it fits, wish it did the same on the SB800 version
Ohh.and yes Phil, I do know what balanced fill flash is, I've been doing it since 1978, when everything was manual only and you used to stack layers of Sellotape across the flash - ohhh happy days
I use one regularly BTW, no problems getting the alignment right on the 550...
Speak soon
Phil