Bird in Flight... How to make it better?

[TwoTwoLeft]

1)

15mm, 1/250, f10, ISO100, Built-in Flash
2)

15mm, 1/250, f8, ISO100, Built-in Flash

My bird's flight feathers are starting to grow back and he's cruise'n around, so I thought I'd try it out. With no real plan, I'm happy with the results. I just set it to manual, flash on, AF off & set focus for about 2ft. Now I want to make them better.... I was just using the built-in flash. I might be able to borrow a 430EX so that will open up some OCF or just better lighting possibilities. I realize the wall is too close and lighting & shadows are harsh. His feathers are still growing in & he hasn't lost the trimmed ones completely, so it looks like a bad haricut. I have access to a big, white, indoor open area that I could light up. Has anyone ever done anything like this before? I'm using a Canon 60D with a EFS 15-85.

 

[480sparky]

Less cluttered background.

Wings straight out.

Not so straight-on to the bird.

 

[pen]

The on board flash will always give you those horrible shadows on the wall if you have to shoot indoors so get as far from a wall as you can. As 480Sparky pointed out unclutter the BG. If you can get a flash and fire it remotely or bounce it that would work better as the bird wouldn't get blown out by the harsh direct flash.

 

[shootermcgavin]

That's a pretty bird, I would not be shooting a flash directly at it while it is flying. You want to open your aperture as much as it can go also. I've got a 60D also and I've never had so much noise at 100iso, the left side of the images look like there's a bunch of noise to me. Maybe it's from resizing or something like that. 1/250 might be a little slow also, to get it sharp you might want to try to get to 1/500. Where you are shooting though you will need an ISO of about 800 probably, the image should still look great at 800 on my 60D it's fine.

 

[TwoTwoLeft]

Thanks for the response!

The flash doesn't bother him. If it did, he would have only done it once and never flew to my hand again as long was holding the camera in the other. He's not dumb. His eyes are on the side of his head, so he's not looking directly at the flash. It would be the same as a human picking up the flash in their peripheral.

The reason why there is so much noise at ISO100 is because the background was really underexposed. There just wasn't enough ambient light in the room. Thats the next step.... The lens will open up to 3.5, the only problem with that is the DOF becomes too shallow. From what I found f8 was giving the the best results with sharpness and getting all the keeping all the bird in focus. With the built-in flash the the shutter speed will only go up to 1/250. So I'm limited there.

So if I'm thinking correctly. The faster shutter speed I use, the brighter the ambient light source I will need to get a nice clean white background?

 

[shootermcgavin]

Up the ISO and ditch the flash. If you can get that other flash and diffuse the light give that a shot but bounce it off a wall don't shoot it direct at the bird. The on camera flash sucks, it will ruin more images than improve upon them.