Flash fill light for birding

[Bear Dale]

Do you ever use flash fill light for birding in deep dark bush or late afternoon?

Do you turn the flash output down? Do you use a diffuser?

[Bear Dale]

Found this article that answers heaps of my questions -

http://www.australianphotography.com...wildlife-shots

[nardes]

I use an on-camera Speedlite in the rainforest.

Generally, I apply the following:

• If it is very dark (i.e. very often...) I just set ETTL II on the Speedlite and dial in Flash Exposure Compensation as required.
• If there is danger that the camera will try to set a too low shutter speed (i.e. 1/30 sec or less), I set TV Mode and choose 1/200 sec, wide open and let the Speedlite ETTL II do all the calculations.
• If the bird(s) are darting back and forth, I always set ETTL II on the Speedlite.
• If the subject remains at the same distance, then it might pay to experiment with Manual Mode so you can control the flash output for a better balance with the ambient.

Ideally, I would like to get the Speedlite off the camera but have not yet found a decent walk around bracket for this.

Cheers

Dennis

[Bear Dale]

Appreciated Dennis, thank you.

[Tannin]

Good advice from Dennis.

I often use fill flash, nearly always on an off-camera bracket attached to my tripod. Fill flash is a really, really useful tool.

Exposure is challenging. I start by dialing in -2/3rds flash exposure compensation (FEC). I quite often adjust to less fill than that (e.g., -1 & 1/3rd FEC, whatever provides a nice balance) but only seldom any more - too much fill and you start to get unnatural looking pictures a lot of the time.

So -2/3rds FEC and aperture priority set flat or (more often) - 1/3rd EC. That's the start where you just want to lift the foreground a little. When it's too dark to do that, I switch to manual exposure, still leaving the camera to figure out the flash (aka ETTL) and adjusting both the FEC and the manual exposure settings to get the lighting I want. It takes a bit of practice but the results are very, very rewarding.

One tip: whenever you are in doubt, take a few test shots of a leaf or something before you have a real bird in the frame.

Good luck and enjoy!