Flashgun for bird photography (1 Viewer)

I am currently using a canon 430ex flashgun with lens set to f16 for dof on birds at a distance of approx 6mtrs but cannot use my canon 40 d on burst mode as flashgun cannot charge fast enough to keep up. I wondered if the 580ex would keep up with motordrive. Perhaps you know of a different flash that would keep oace at 6.5 frames per second. The type of photos I take can be seen in my gallery and hope that somebody can help with my query.

many thanks

db100

If you are 6m away and using f16 I would say the gun must be using near full power and a 580 will make no difference.

Only thing you can do is move much closer and also use a slightly wider aperture, doing this the gun will need a lot less power and so you will get more shots.

I do a similar thing and my guns are 24" away and I can get 2-3 maybe 4 shots, depending on aperture, at iso 200 using 430's. Actually, by the time the secong shot has gone off the bird has normally gone anyway.

You can probabaly buy specially made guns but I would imagine they cost a fortune.

Many of your pictures appear to be taken with a 70-200mm lens and a 1.4x teleconverter. I am not sure if the lens is the f/2.8 or f/4 version. Either way, you end up with a focal length of 280mm.

The total depth of field at this focal length at various apertures with 280mm is:

f/4: 7cm
f/5.6: 9cm
f/8: 13cm
f/11: 19cm
f/16: 27cm

I would guess that f/8 or f/11 should give you sufficient depth of field for the type of shots you are targeting. Note that if you use apertures smaller than f/11, you start running into diffraction limit with a high-pixel density camera like the 40D and the sharpness of your images will suffer.

I also noticed that many of your pictures are taken at ISO400. You can use ISO800 to improve the performance of the flash and the 40D should still give you excellent pictures.

Another option is to use a Fresnel lens like the Better Beamer on the flash to focus more of the beam on the subject.

Recycle time on 580ex is slower than 430ex, so you won't gain anything. Burst mode with a flash is very close to impossible without melting the flash.

I have recently been trying night time shots of badgers amongst other things, using a 40D, either 70-200mm f2.8 or 300mm f2.8, and a 580EX with a flash extender.

Obviously my exposure requirements are entirely different from yours, as the flash is the only source of light, however it has led me to discover what flash settings work with the high speed frame rate of the 40D.

I soon found that manual rather than auto is essential to control flash output. 1/16th power will fire 7 frames, miss the next, fire 1 or 2 more, then miss the next 2. 1/8th power will cope with 5 frames, but not much more, above that I haven't tried as it would be of no use to me. I can't imagine you would need more than 7 frames for a bird at 6m, it would most likely have flown by then.

As has been suggested, a flash extender would help concentrate the beam on the subject, thus allowing a lower power to be used than the flash alone. That combined with slightly higher ISO and a wider aperture could prove sufficient.

Cheers,
Matt