Experience? (1 Viewer)

I see no one has posted anything about flash use, and it has become my most recent hope for improvement. So I'm asking. Is anyone out there using flash and, if so, how? Manual, automatic, fill flash (my plan), on camera, off camera, telephoto lenses (I hope)?????

:h?:

Art

Hi Art,

Good question. I have on occasion used fill-in flash for close subjects on dull days. The birds don't seem to be disturbed by it. I only have a built in flash though, so for more distant subjects it isn't much use as effective range is just a few feet.

The only time I used flash was on my Minolta when it fired once when I didn't expect it to while going for a shot of a greater spotted woodpecker ... opps ... the bird flew off, closely followed by yours truely as the other birders got rather upset at my carelessness ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

Ron

Well that wasn't the desired result, Ron. I have, however, before I started taking pictures myself, watched what I assumed to be a professional, with pro camera and huge lens and big off-camera flash on a solid tripod, taking pictures of warblers I was watching high in the trees. I didn't talk to him about it at the time because a) I didn't have the equipment or intent and b) he seemed quite involved in what he was doing. So I'm sure??? it works. Of course he wasn't concerned about other birders, but I didn't see any birds jump in surprise when his flash fired.

Art

For fill flash you would be advised to try and reduce the flash output by dialling down to power by about 1.5 stops if your gun allows it. Alternatively use one of the clip on diffusers made by Stofen.

A really good trick is to set the film speed to 2 stops faster and the exposure to 2 stop overexposed so for example with 100 speed film set the film speed to 400 then overexpose by 2 stops using the shutter speed or exposure compensation. Works a treat to reduce the effect of the flash. This was the way I did fill flash for 2 years and also works with the built in flash on all SLRs and even some compacts which allow you to override settings.

Hope this is helpful
P