Foraging Badger

Taken last Wednesday night at around 11:00pm. The location is a woodland path. Spent about 15 minutes with this chap until he'd scoffed all the peanuts and moved on.

E-510 with single flash gun mounted in hot shoe, 50-200mm zoom @ 200mm, ISO 1600, 1/180 @ f3.5, cropped to vertical, Noise Ninja, LAB sharpening. I've done some re-touching on his right eye to reduce the reflection from the flash.

C & C welcome



Paul

Paul

Nice capture, next stop a badger amongst blue bells

Out of curiosity given the use of flash, why the choice of iso 1600? I would have thought the the flash range is the limiting factor (and has thrown beyond the subject) and shutter/aperture is set in manual mode rather than than Av or Tv/ambient fill flash?

I think badgers have moved onto the railway embankment below my garden given the huge amount of fresh earth that has been thrown about so have started a process of limited peanut feeding myself ready for some red eye photography I've not tried wildlife night time flash before so i am keen to learn anything

Hi Paul,

Lovely capture!

The problems with badger photograhy when using one camera flash is that you get white eye as here-easily solved in PS, The flash ceratinly has illuminated the whole scene well without blowing the whites-A head up would have been nice but i know how difficult that is once they start feeding they think of nothing else
Look forward to more

Dave

Hi Mike,

Night time experiments in the back garden seemed to indicate that with my FL-36 ISO 800 is needed to get a good exposure at around 10 metres. As the badger was about 15 metres away, I cranked the ISO right up just to be on the safe side. I'm very much feeling my way with this so I might be being far too conservative but on the plus side higher ISO = less flash required which is going to be less unsettling for the Badger. You're very lucky if you have Badgers moving in at the bottom of the garden. When you put the peanuts down, put some under a brick or a large stone then if the brick's been moved and the peanuts are gone you'll know it was a Badger who'd taken them. I caught a Bank Vole "stealing" some peanuts almost as soon as I'd put them down. It was hilarious watching him trying repeatedly to stuff one more peanut in his mouth than would actually fit



Paul

Very nice, for me, given the time of night, the whole pic could have been darker and more authentic looking. No idea how to achieve that, though...I suppose I would do test shots and look at histogram untill I got it 'right' for the night!

David,

Yes the white eye is a bit of a problem but it's not too bad to fix in PP.

Paula,

I know what you mean. I actually spent a long time agonising over how bright to shoot it. In the end I decided that I could always make the photo darker in PP if I wanted to so I just let the camera do its thing.

That's a nice clean shot but I would imagine that it would be possible to take a picture with less light from the flash. I think it would be improved by being darker. A great project with a steep learning curve I would imagine and I am looking forward to seeing more.
Eric