Night Settings (1 Viewer)

Hi,

What settings should I use for shooting birds/mammals at night? I have a Canon 5D mark iii, 300 f4 lens + 1.4x teleconverter, speedlite 600, and better beamer fx3. I've found plenty of information about how to use flash during the daytime, but surprisingly little about how to use it at night.

Thanks,
Ben

Your 5D Mark III is a digital camera, so why don't you simply give it a try - it's not as though you're going to waste film. Pointing your set up at foliage some distance away should tell you whether it's likely to be OK for shots of birds.
Or am I seriously missing something?...

Well, I'm glad somebody said it!

Shooting at night can be daunting at first especially if you haven't done it. I experimented with various things and it was quick to establish a routine. I have been doing night photography for nearly five years now. I always shoot in manual mode. Since flash gives you all the light output you only need to be mindful of the reach with your beamer and the aperture/ISO setting and the tonality of your subject. Eg ease off on flash compensation for lighter tones and increase for darker tones. Experiment a little. The histogram is still a good tool to use, though I don't mind blocking the black tones, which you will do if you have a lot of black background around your subject. Most of my subjects are between 5-30 meters away so I generally start shooting with the following settings:

Manual Mode
ISO400
f/8
1/60th
580EXII with beamer at +1/3
500/4+1.4x

Just remember it is unlikely you will get camera shake since the flash cuts light off much faster than your shutter stays open. I have been consistently successful getting shots of nocturnal animals with shutter speeds as low as 1/6th of a second using my 500/4L and at least one TC, though I try to keep SS between 1/30th and 1/125th at all times.

This is a recent shot of a fledged Powerful Owl using stacked converters (FL = 1,400mm) with EXIF not showing the 1.4x, so aperture is cheated as well. It was f/16. Almost full frame from about 10m away.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/105582591@N02/11373170956/

Night photography is fantastic and you should have stacks of good subjects in your neck of the woods.