I don’t use flash very often and I especially don’t use it very often with wildlife but it is possible.
For this image made with a Canon 1D MK II and Canon 500 f/4 lens, mounted on a tripod with gimbal head, I used a Canon flash with a Visual Echoes FX-1B “Better Beamer” Flash Extender because the eagle was hiding under the canopy of some trees. He was very tame and patient but there just wasn’t any light to speak of.
Because I didn’t want the flash to overpower the bird and blow out the highlights I used on-flash exposure compensation of minus 2 stops so that just a kiss of light hit the bird.
I made this image at 1/25th sec, f/7.1 in ETTL mode. The flash extender aims the light so that light falloff is minimized. The slow shutter speed was necessitated by the low-light situation and ISO was set to 500. Because the flash fires in a fraction of a second, the slow shutter speed was no problem.
I had seen some portraits of eagles made by photographers during the Civil War in B&W so when I looked at this scene I knew I would make it monochrome when I finished it.
I used MacPhun’s Tonalty Pro to convert to B&W and I am happy with the result.
Some people wrongly assume that a camera flash bothers birds. It absolutely does not in almost any circumstance, except when a bird is sitting on a nest with eggs in it. And even then, depending on the species it may be no problem. The smaller the bird the more likely the flash is to bother it in that situation.
While somewhat controversial in some circles, I have no problem with using flash on wildlife photos. I just don’t have much occasion to do it but it is possible.
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Filed under: Lighting, Photography, Wildlife Tagged: flash, Scott Bourne, wildlife photography
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