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

[Tannin]

My thanks to Jev and Smorter for contributions so far, and to Mark for starting what is turning into a really useful thread.

I can't see that reaction to high-speed flash thing, Smorter. OK, they are incredibly quick, but reacting to the flash pulses in less than 1/1000th of a second? Some birds react to the sound of the mirror flipping up (one of the things you do when shooting without flash is fire plenty of shots so that they get used to the shutter noise, most species (but not all) do that quite quickly) but that's in the order of 1/20th of a second when you are not using flash. There is a longer delay betwen shutter-press and shutter actuation using flash, presumably because of the time required for the pre-flash - at least there seems to be as the shutter doesn't go off as quickly as I expect when I'm using flash.

Now, to doing it with manual flash settings. Here is a challenge! There is no way you could ever calculate the correct settings and make the adjustments in the very brief time you have (until the bird settles, we don't know how far away it's going to be, what the background is going to be, or what colour it is going to be - that White-naped Honeyeaer above, for example, needs around 2/3rds of a stop less flash than a more typical mid to dark toned bird, otherwise you blow the whites out). But I can come at the idea of calculating a "standard" setting in a given location under given lighting conditions, and then adjusting up and down from there on the fly by guess and by god. (After all, using ETTL we are already estimating the manual exposure settings for ambient light on the background and estimating the amount of flash exposure compensation.)

That is going to be a major challenge just the same! You already have way too much to do in not enough time doing any sort of smal bird photography, it gets harder with TTL flash, harder again with manual flash. (I've actually been pondering doing that myself at Belinda's place where the drinkers come thick and fast in season, but I'll have to wait till the hot weather returns next year.)

Last point: distance and power. The Better Beamer isn't terribly efficient; it's a fiddly damn thing to set up and you still spray a lot of light around where you don't need it, but is does make quite a difference to your reach. Wild guess: 3 x more reach? Something like that. But 20 metres is way too far - never mind whether the flash can do that distance, you want to be at less than 10 metres from a small bird prety much anytime you take a shot, and you don't start getting really good results until you get to around 5 metres. (As a rough rule of thumb, I reckon than once I have to use a close-up ring on my 500 - which has a minimum focus distance of 4.5 metres - I should be getting excellent results. Sometimes I put an extension tube on it when I'm just doing general walk-around birding - that means I can't take shots of anything that isn't pretty close, and though I obviously miss some shots, the ones I miss are mostly the ones I'd only be throwing away later anyway.)

[jev]

I can't see that reaction to high-speed flash thing, Smorter. OK, they are incredibly quick, but reacting to the flash pulses in less than 1/1000th of a second?

Probably not, but HSS starts generating light before the shutter starts to move. Comparable to the preflash me thinks - enough time for the bird to react.

Now, to doing it with manual flash settings. Here is a challenge! There is no way you could ever calculate the correct settings and make the adjustments in the very brief time you have

So, you'ld have to be a bit lucky. I would suggest to take an educated guess on where the bird is most likely to be settling and set things up accordingly. Agreed, one would miss quite often but sometimes you'ld nail it. I really don't see an alternative if automatic preflash is not an option. Perhaps an old TTL flash might do a better job since it doesn't generate a preflash (but you'ld have to find a way to fool the flash sensor to sense how much light is generated). Hey - this is actually a good idea to dust of the old analog camera . Without kidding, perhaps an older automatic flash that runs in standalone mode is the solution? There are Metz flashguns out there that read the reflected light and cuts of the light when done without camera intervention... that might work.

The Better Beamer isn't terribly efficient; it's a fiddly damn thing to set up and you still spray a lot of light around where you don't need it, but is does make quite a difference to your reach. Wild guess: 3 x more reach?

If it allows 3 times the reach, that thing would be pretty efficient (3 x reach = 8 x the light!). I don't own a BB, but googling brings up values varying from 1 to 3 stops - and that is quite astonishing in my book.

[Tannin]

Interesting stuff, Jev. I didn't know that HSS starts before the shutter opens. Next time I have the opportunity, I'll do some experimentation with manual HSS (no pre-flash) to see what sort of reaction time I get from the White-naped Honeyeaters. (These are a good test bird as they seldom fail to react to the flash, but (at Belinda's place) they are common and one calls in to drink every few minutes, so I can afford to spook them, confident that another one will turn up soon enough.)

You have to be a bit lucky with bird photography all the time! Your method sounds like the way to go. In the sort of location where you are worlking with birds and flash - typically the atraction is food or (most often) water - there are usually only a half-dozen favoured perches, so it is perhaps feasable to set up on one and learn how much + or - to dial in for a couple of others. As it is (using ETTL) you are dialing in different flash and exposure settings for different species and different perches, and get to learn that (e.g.) the spot over on the left needs a wider aperture (weaker backlighting) and a bit more negative FEC (a little closer to the camera), so I guess that it's just one more complexity to get the mind around and the clumsy fingers to deal with.

The 580EX II has an option to shoot using TTL rather than ETTL; I've never used it. Would that have the same effect as using an old flash?

That 3 x number was just something I made up on the spot, but somewhere around a couple of stops ... that seems about right from my experience. You can certainly shoot from a good distance further away, and (using HSS) get up to insane shutter speeds if you are reasonably close - I'm not sure what the fastest I've used is, but up about 1/2000th or so works fine. And yep, you still get movement blur at that speed: to properly freeze a small bird in flight, I like to be at 1/3000th or better - which must be taking us well beyond poor light / flash territory!