black birds at night

[laincai]

Hi all. A flock of black birds flew past when I was on my way home tonight. I tried to capture the moment but to no avail.

It was pitch black, I set the ISO to 1600, f/1.7 20mm and the camera was happy to shoot at 1/20s. However the AF wouldn't work due to how dark it was. I then switched to MF but still was unable to focus because of the very noisy evf at night. Needless to say I failed to make any proper exposures.

What would you have done to make a proper exposure?

 

[Stradawhovious]

Shoot them during the day?


Some things just don't lend themselves to being photographed.

 

[flyin-lowe]

Not sure it is possible to properly expose black birds on a pitch black night.

 

[BekahAura]

Well if you saw these birds I'm assuming there was still some light in the sky, maybe late sunset time? I think if you expose for the sky, and manually set your focus to infinity you would get a cool silhouette of the birds. They were black anyway right?

If it was pitch black then you wouldn't be able to get anything. Ok now that I'm rereading your post you said you had your camera set to ISO 1600 and it was still under exposed? How did you see these black birds against a black sky?

Did you get anything? Or just a black rectangle? Post what you got.