Flash for wildlife - Nikon body.

[ac12]

Trick to learning to track/pan.

• Go to a LARGE park or open area that is next to a road.
• Set up about 500ft or more from the road.
• Practice tracking/panning cars L->R and L<-R.
• As you get better and confident, move closer in steps, maybe 50 feet at a step.

The closer you get to the road, the faster the apparent speed of the cars.
Important, when you pan is to keep following the subject even after the shot(s).
I use a stance that is based on a shotgun shooters stance, so I can do the L->R and L<-R track, with minimal feet movement.

gud luk

 

[Dyslexicbloke]

Well some of my new toys turned up...
Just need to lesrn how to use them now.

I am a little confused RE exposure when using flash and I expect I will be even more confused when I go manual on the body, auto ISO and TTL flash.

I took some test shots in the house, zoomed in on old woodwork at aout 8m.
The flash, without an extender as I was intensionally trying to shoot stuff outside its range, seemed to cope well. I realise I can alter the output but I am not sure about what the camera is telling me.

Will it lift the ISO, as if trying to use naturna light, and then back off the flash?
that seems logical as the available light isnt known, but is somwhat counter productive.

I guess what I am asking is thr method I should be using to set things up.
Obviously I realise that no answer will/can contain actual settings for as given shot but I suspect there atre strategies/settings I should be using and dont know about.

I bought ba flash extender, that I habvent tried yet, because I thought it wise to learn to work without one first, bassically because if I dont know what to expect without one it will be imposssible to judge the efgfectivenes, or otherwise, of asdding one.

HSS seems to work well as dose TTL on the cheap cable.

I also bought a book but the 900+ pages are gvoing to tsake some reading.
I am sure the book will cover flash but I doubt it is gong to cover a flash setup modified with a lens.

If anyone can suddest the things that are most pertinant and how to mo about taking test shots ro learn I would be most greatful.
I am happy to play about but with so many settings I am a bit lost and feer I may set off down the wrong path.

Al

 

[greybeard]

My theory on ISO is that I would rather have high ISO noise on a sharp picture than low noise on a blurry picture.
So raise the ISO to what you need to get the pix.
The D7200 will let you shoot higher ISO with less noise.

I regularly shoot night sports under lights at ISO 12800, and the images are fine.
Bud very oddly, shooting at 12800 in the gym, I get more noisy images.
So you will have to shoot and see what YOU get with your camera, and how it looks.

I agree with BC, shoot wide open. Unless you NEED the additional DoF.
That lets you shoot at a lower ISO and a higher shutter speed.
Then trust the AF to get the bird in focus.

The faster the "apparent" speed of the bird, the faster your shutter speed has to be.
This is a bit tricky, cuz the "apparent" speed increases the closer the bird is to you, and slows the farther the bird is from you.

Example a jet at 30,000 feet altitude is easy to shoot at 1/125 of a second, because the "apparent" speed is relatively slow. But the same plane at 1,000 feet altitude will seem to move much faster.​

So what should your shutter speed be? You have to shoot and experiment. And take notes, so that you can study them later, to see what shutter speed worked for what types of shots.

As for flash.
If you lower the power level, to get a faster recycle; you reduce your flash range, because of the lower power level.
Trade-off, there is no free lunch.

I have the D7500 and I like to shoot in manual mode with auto iso. I usually set my shutter speed to 1/1000 and my 150-600 at f/8 or f/11 and let the ISO float. These new cameras like the D7500 and D7200 are so much better at higher ISO that the rules we used with your D90 generation of cameras just don't apply to these newer ones.

Golden Finch by TOM STRAIGHT, on Flickr

This was shot at ISO 1250 1/1000 sec and f/11 at 600mm. I used minimal noise reduction in PP.