Trogon Photo Tours

August 2016 - This month's newsletter is about bat photography starting with photographing roosting bats to my experiences photographing Mexican Free-tailed Bats at a large colony and lastly discussing elaborate multi-flash setups for bat photography.

Lesser Short-faced Fruit Bat photographed October 2015, Krung Ching, Thailand - Canon 7DII, Sigma 150-600 Contemporary at 500mm 1/80 F8, iso 800, Av mode, evaluative metering at -0.3, 580ex flash at -1.0, handheld.  Our guides found a mother and baby roosting under a banana leaf.  It was kind of a difficult shot getting under the leaf and getting a shot.  Without a tripod and with the dark conditions I had to rely on the flash to help quite a bit.  I didn't get any red eye but the shadow from the flash isn't ideal.  However I find when working with bats they usually roost in quite dark places so I end up using a fair bit of flash, in other cases I have often had to shoot the flash at 0 flash compensation because the images were too dark without it and I didn't want to increase my iso more.  Also they tend to be in difficult areas to set up a tripod.  Because they are night animals anyway, I don't mind if they look a bit overflashed whereas with a bird image it would really bother me. 

Mexican Free-tailed Bats photographed June 2016 Frio Bat Cave, TX.  Canon 5D3 500F4, 1/3200 F6.3, iso 1600, Av mode, evaluative metering at -1.0, handheld.  This image was from my first visit to the Frio Bat Cave.  10 to 12 million adult bats roost in this cave from April to September each year.  It's quite a spectacle to view them as they fly out of the cave over the course of a few hours each evening.  I found that shooting them backlit against a hillside as I did here resulted in some of the best images as then the underside of their wings were lit up by the sun.  There are some limitations to viewing this type of image with lots of bats (or birds for that matter) small in the frame at web size, they are best viewed much larger.  I tried some images with smaller apertures (higher F-stops like F8 and F11) which in theory I would think would work better but this turned out to be one of my favorite images as the background is blurred more and many of the bats were in the focal plane since I was shooting them from a distance. 

Red-tailed Hawk and Mexican Free-tailed Bats photographed June 2016, Frio Bat Cave, TX.  Canon 5D3 500F4 1/3200 F8, iso 1600, Av mode evaluative metering +1.0, handheld.  One of the exciting things about photographing bats exiting from caves is you often see birds of prey trying to catch dinner as the bats come out of the cave.  I had witnessed this several times in Thailand but I had never been close enough to the cave entrance to get a good shot.  At the Frio Bat Cave you are very close to the cave entrance when the bats come out which makes it possible sometimes to photograph birds of prey attacking the bats.   But most of the time the birds of prey attack a bit away from the cave entrance as was the case here.  If you went to the cave a lot I think you would eventually get some close ups of this type of action.   I do have an image of this hawk with a bat in it's talons but unfortunately it had turned it's back to me when it caught the bat. On a subsequent trip in July there were both a Peregrine Falcon and a Red-tailed Hawk in the area chasing bats but they weren't close enough to get really good images.

Mexican Free-tailed Bats photographed June 2016 at the Frio Bat Cave, TX.  Canon 5D3 500F4 1/13 F22, iso 100, Av mode, evaluative metering at -1.0, handheld.  When the light was getting quite dark after sunset I decided to take some abstract slow shutter speed images.  This was my favorite of those.  To do this drop your iso and shutter speed way down and if you need to also stop down more to get to a really low shutter speed.

Mexican Free-tailed Bats photographed July 2016 at the Frio Bat Cave, TX.  Canon 1DX II,500F4, 1/800 F5.6, iso 1600, Av mode, evaluative metering at 0, handheld.  You can also get some nice sunset colors in the sky with the right weather.  This was my first trip out with the 1DX II.  It's an impressive camera, I need to get used to being able to bump my iso higher as I could have used both more shutter speed and depth of field for this shot.  The 1DX II has been impressive so far, before the bats came out there were Cave Swallows flying around the cavern and I managed quite a few keepers of them in flight - as you know if you have tried photographing flying swallows is quite difficult. 

Mexican Free-tailed Bats photographed July 2016 at the Frio Bat Cave, TX.  Canon 1DX II, 500F4 1.4x 1/2500 F7.1, iso 1250, Av mode, evaluative metering +1.0, handheld.  To some extent this shot shows the difficulty of getting close up shots of bats in flight.  First of all they are small and secondly when they are in a large group like this it's difficult to get one isolated.  Lastly bats fly mostly at dusk or at night so that makes the lighting difficult.  With a group of bats like this it's very difficult to get them all in focus because of the low light which makes it impossible to stop down a lot.  How can we solve these problems?  One way is to to use a Phototrap or a laser triggered setup where the camera or flashes are triggered automatically by anything which hits the point where the lasers or infrared beams meet. 

Pallid Bat photographed May 2016 at the Pond at Elephant Head, Amado, AZ.  Canon 5D3, 500F4, 20 second continual exposure, F22, iso 800, Phototrap, 4 flashes at 1/16 power, Gitzo tripod, Wimberley head.  This is from our Arizona workshop in May, it was my favorite bat image from the shoot because of the full reflection.  The way this works is the bats are coming in to drink water at a small watering hole.  The flashes and triggers are set up close to the water.  When a bat breaks the spot where the infrared beams meet the flashes are triggered.  The cameras are set on 20 second continual exposures so that you get an image whenever the flashes are triggered (you end up with quite a few black images because the flashes didn't go off).  Because the flashes are at low power - 1/16 the effective shutter speed is very fast, something like 1/8000 of a second so the bats are stopped nicely in flight.  It's a lot like multi-flash hummingbird photography in that respect.  

Little Brown Bats photographed May 2016 at the Pond at Elephant Head, Amado, AZ.  Canon 5D3, 500F4, 20 second continual exposure, F22, iso 800, Phototrap, 4 flashes at 1/16 power, Gitzo tripod, Wimberley head.  One interesting result of the 20 second exposure is occasionally 2 bats will fly through the Phototrap within the same 20 second exposure but not at the same exact time, this results in a double exposure - a composite of sorts.  I thought this one was interesting showing 2 stages of the bats drinking water.  While the phototrap uses infrared light to trigger the flashes, you can also use lasers to trigger both the camera and flashes.  One advantage of using the phototrap setup is you can use the 20 second continual exposures and have 8 or so cameras using the same flashes, this is great for workshops.  While if you are using laser triggers that are connected to the camera you need a set of flashes for each camera.   So that is more of a one photographer at a time setup unless you are willing to share the images with everyone there.  I have done this type of bat photography with some friends in the San Diego area. 

Mexican Long-nosed Bat photographed May 2015 at the Pond at Elephant Head, Amado, AZ.  Canon 7D2, 300F4, 20 second continual exposure, F16, iso 400, Phototrap, 4 flashes at 1/16 power, tripod.  This was one of my favorite shots from our 2015 Arizona workshop.  This was taken on my 2nd camera as each photographer has space to set up 2 cameras and tripods at the pond to ensure lots of good images.  With the 7D2 I use a lower iso and F-stop as the noise performance isn't as good as the 5D3.  If you would like to do some bat photography with us, we have this Arizona workshop again next May and I will be taking some private workshops to the Frio Bat Cave.  There is a good photo ranch not far from there as well.