Another Try With Flash

[baturn]

OCF about 10* to my left and about 12 ft. from subjects.
f8
1/250
ISO400
TTL, bare flash

Any comments / help appreciated.


1. House Sparrow

2. Dark Eyed Junco

3. House Sparrow

4. Spotted Towhee

 

[MSnowy]

Pretty good. The first two look good the 3rd is soft and the last one looks like the focus was on the tree behind the bird.

 

[Derrel]

I like how flash gives a nice catchlight in the eyes of animals and birds. I think shots two and three show very subtle evidence of slight ghost imaging, from the combination of flash + daylight. See in shot 3 how the bird's beak has a soft, white outline, the so-called ghost image,above the beak? I think the ambient light was bright enough, and the shutter speed was slow enough, that you got a very gentle ghost image, which hurts sharpness. This is usually only clearly seen at edges of strong lines, like the beak against the darker branch behind it, and almost invisible in areas of soft contrast,like the birds' feathers, but this is the issue I think I am seeing.

A friend of mine once had me diagnose some flash + daylight shots of black-capped chickadees coming in to his feeder and pre-focused photography spot using a 75-300 Canon lens and a flash. Because high-speed sync flash is actually stroboscopic, he had terrible blurring of the birds, and he was unsure what it was being caused by. But your scenario is different on the junco shot (shot #2): you were shooting SINGLE-burst, regular flash, at 1/200 sync speed at ISO 200, and the movement of the bird's beak is shown in the very subtle daylight-illuminated "ghost" image.

I think the ISO, f/stop, and shutter speed are all fairly close enough to a "daylight" exposure that might be cutting sharpness down. I think that shot #3 looks slightly soft for the same reason, ghost image blurring. The effect is subtle, it's not blatantly obvious, but that is what I see definitely in #2, with the beak outline, and I think it's also affecting shot #3.

This is a tricky situation, when the daylight exposure of 1/200 second at f/8 at 200 to 400 ISO is actually enough exposure to create say a "50%" exposure, and the flash is 50 percent or so. I think you need to get the daylight exposure to be less, and the flash to make up more of the total exposure; the problem is that at 500mm, even the slightest movement of ANYthing is recorded pretty large.

 

[LarryLomona]

I like 1 & 2 beautiful work!

 

[baturn]

Pretty good. The first two look good the 3rd is soft and the last one looks like the focus was on the tree behind the bird.

Thanks. I think Darrel's explanation covers the 3rd and you're right about the last one.

 

[Didereaux]

Something to consider especially with the little birds closer in is Hi-speed synch. The output is less with HS, but you gain on shutter speed. It the flash is only for fill anyway often times HS will do the trick and cuts way down on motion bur from you or the bird. Just another tool to play with, but you might find it useful occasionally.

 

[baturn]

I like how flash gives a nice catchlight in the eyes of animals and birds. I think shots two and three show very subtle evidence of slight ghost imaging, from the combination of flash + daylight. See in shot 3 how the bird's beak has a soft, white outline, the so-called ghost image,above the beak? I think the ambient light was bright enough, and the shutter speed was slow enough, that you got a very gentle ghost image, which hurts sharpness. This is usually only clearly seen at edges of strong lines, like the beak against the darker branch behind it, and almost invisible in areas of soft contrast,like the birds' feathers, but this is the issue I think I am seeing.

A friend of mine once had me diagnose some flash + daylight shots of black-capped chickadees coming in to his feeder and pre-focused photography spot using a 75-300 Canon lens and a flash. Because high-speed sync flash is actually stroboscopic, he had terrible blurring of the birds, and he was unsure what it was being caused by. But your scenario is different on the junco shot (shot #2): you were shooting SINGLE-burst, regular flash, at 1/200 sync speed at ISO 200, and the movement of the bird's beak is shown in the very subtle daylight-illuminated "ghost" image.

I think the ISO, f/stop, and shutter speed are all fairly close enough to a "daylight" exposure that might be cutting sharpness down. I think that shot #3 looks slightly soft for the same reason, ghost image blurring. The effect is subtle, it's not blatantly obvious, but that is what I see definitely in #2, with the beak outline, and I think it's also affecting shot #3.

This is a tricky situation, when the daylight exposure of 1/200 second at f/8 at 200 to 400 ISO is actually enough exposure to create say a "50%" exposure, and the flash is 50 percent or so. I think you need to get the daylight exposure to be less, and the flash to make up more of the total exposure; the problem is that at 500mm, even the slightest movement of ANYthing is recorded pretty large.

Thanks for this! I was wondering about the softness and trying to explain it away to huge crops and noise reduction in LR. The white line , I thought might be motion blur.
Question; If I set camera exposure to say -1 stop will that only affect the ambient exposure and allow the flash to have more effect? Other methods?

 

[baturn]

Something to consider especially with the little birds closer in is Hi-speed synch. The output is less with HS, but you gain on shutter speed. It the flash is only for fill anyway often times HS will do the trick and cuts way down on motion bur from you or the bird. Just another tool to play with, but you might find it useful occasionally.

Thanks. I'll give it a shot.

 

[Derrel]

SNIP>I was wondering about the softness and trying to explain it away to huge crops and noise reduction in LR. The white line , I thought might be motion blur.
Question; If I set camera exposure to say -1 stop will that only affect the ambient exposure and allow the flash to have more effect? Other methods?

The issue I see is that this was shot in Manual exposure mode, and the limiting variable really is the fastest shutter speed in outdoor daylight. The exposure of f/8 at 1/200 second with ISO 200 means that the exposure is very close to being the right, proper exposure for a sunny day in mid-February in much of North America...

Not seeing how minus Exposure Compensation would really affect the exposure of the daylight-lighted parts of the scene, in this type of scenario.

Making the aperture smaller, like say f/13, and the shutter at 1/250 second, and maybe lowering the ISO a bit if possible, would cause the daylight part of the exposure to create less of an image; making the flash burst STRONGER, by moving it closer, or by narrowing the beam spread, would elevate the flash's relative contribution to the exposure, and make the flash part pretty mush the main source of light.

To look at this another way, at the 1/200 second at ISO 200 to SIO 400 range, at f/8 in daylight, no matter what the exposure mode is, that much exposure means the daylight is making up a pretty substantial part of the exposure. If you take a test shot with the flash turned OFF, and the exposure is not dim, then there's always a risk of ghosting.

Making the flash more-powerful will change the way the background renders, in the areas not reached by the flash. This requires a careful balancing of multiple elements: daylight, flash, ISO level, f/stop's size, and the foreground-to-background illumination from the flash. The closer the flash is to the bird, the FASTER and more serious the fall-off of flash is behind the bird, the farther the flash, the more-even the flash level's rate of fall-off will stay across distance.

 

[baturn]

Thanks again, Derrel. I will keep all this in mind next time the weather is fit. all I'm really trying to do is make up for the difference in light between the open space and the darker area in the bush where the bird is. When I meter off the bird itself it can be a full stop darker.
Any how I'm having fun and I hope, learning a little. So please bear with me.