Bird Photography - Flash Dance - How to prevent it ??

[jev]

What behavior are you talking about, what went wrong?

Without knowing the exact details, here are some pointers:
- what mode did you have your camera on (M, Tv, Av?)
- How much ambient light was there? If there's plenty of light available ("saturday afternoon", probably a lot of light?), chances are your flash would not have added much. I assume ambient light ≈ 12 EV (typical scene, heavy overcast). Without flash, 100 ISO would've given f/5.6 @ 1/125 second, at 400 ISO f/11 at 1/125 or f/8 at 1/250.

Let's do the calculations:
- GN 580EX = 58 at 100 ISO => at 400 ISO GN = 116
- At 20 meters, you'ld need aperture set at 116 / 20 = f/5.8 (in reality: f/5.6)
- With FEV = -2/3, you have maximized the output of the flash

Ergo, you've most probably balanced the flash against the ambient light which makes things very, very tricky. What was the effect you where after?

[MarkChap]

Joost, thanks for the effort, thast some good info there,

Always shoot manual and dial in my own settings
I was happy with the exposure of the shots
It is this I am trying to minimise
Flash Dancing Honeyeater - Haven't IDed him yet

[jev]

Wait, you mean the birds are startled by the flashlight and thus you get strange looking poses? That probably happens because of the preflash going off - if you don't want that, you'll need to switch to non-automatic flashmode. Not so difficult, but you'll need some calculations to perform, similar to what I did there.