Bird photo with flash

[guerrero]

I am interested in use flash for poor ligth.
Anyone can say your experience with flash and telezoom ( i have sigma 170-500 )?
The diference for sb 800, sb 600 e sb 400 in pratice?
Thank´s for help.

[ccsial]

I use flash in poor light. I have a flash extender I use with my SB800. It works quite well. It does not seem to bother the birds either. I have used it to stop humming bird wings too.

You can find the extender at this link.

http://www.rpphoto.com/flashextender/default.asp

[Doug Greenberg]

Yes the "Better Beamer" is the standard for teleflash products nowadays. It's easy to use, inexpensive, and effective. It's a good idea to get some kind of bracket that holds that flash up off of the camera a bit, as otherwise you can get whitish reflections from birds' eyes. You can PS those away, but it's really more satisfying to prevent them in the first place. I got my bracket from Wimberley, but good ones are made by Really Right Stuff and Kirk Products, as well.

There are some tricks one has to learn. If you use too fast a shutter speed (the minimum necessary for flash synch) your photo might come out looking as though it were taken in the middle of the night. You really need to allow some ambient light into the photo for a more natural look. The flash should basically just bring out color and highlights. However, if you use a slow shutter speed there is a danger of 'ghosting,' i.e., the bird might move in mid-exposure, giving you a double image or blurred image. Birds do react quickly to the shutter sometimes and this can be a problem. One has to experiment.

[nirofo]

I use flash with a flash extender regularly, certainly makes a difference on most shots, even if it's just to give the bird an eyelight. I made my own extender out of two strips of aluminium cut and bent to shape, fitted a fresnel lens and fixed to the flash using Velcro, you can obtain all the details for making one if you search google. Fresnel lenses of various sizes can be obtained cheaply at several places, once again search on google. I used a Better Beamer for some time previously but found it a bit fiddly to set up, it was also very flimsy being made from thin plastic material. The aluminium gives the set up more rigidity and is easily adapted to fit almost any flashgun, unlike the Better Beamer which has to be purchased to fit particular flashguns.

nirofo.