Trogon Photo Tours

December 2015 - This month's newsletter discusses techniques of using fill flash for bird photography.  It features a couple of case studies, one from Brazil and one from Thailand.  I find that when leading workshops many photographers are afraid to use flash because they worry they will ruin their shots with it.  If you keep a couple of important settings within certain parameters, the vast majority of the time you will not ruin your shot when using fill flash during the day for bird photography and in many cases you will greatly improve the shot if you are photographing in less than optimal lighting conditions.  The first concept or setting is to almost always have your camera and flash set to high speed synch  mode when photographing birds with flash during the day.  This allows your camera to work with the flash at higher speeds than normal flash mode (where the highest normal synch speed is usually around 1/250 of a second although it varies slightly from camera model to model).  With Canon you can set the high speed synch directly on the flash using a button on the speedlight.  With Nikon you must set it inside the camera, you should set your synch speed to say FP after the speed, for example 1/250 FP.  This will allow the flash to synch with your camera at faster than 1/250 of a second.  One reason for having this almost always set to high speed is that if the camera thinks the exposure should be for example 1/1000 of a second and the maximum normal synch speed for your camera is 1/250 if you don't have the high speed synch set your image will be overexposed by 2 stops, this can often result in a white out, a completely unusable image.

Brazilian Ruby, female photographed August 2015, Micai de Cima, Atlantic Rainforest of Brazil.  Canon 5D3 500F4, 1/2000 F8, iso 800, Av mode, evaluative metering -0.7.  This is an image taken without flash.  The 1/2000 of a second was enough to stop the wings well but there are some harsh shadows on the bird as we were shooting this about 10am on a sunny morning.  Even though we left early it took a long time to get to this location, then when we arrived we needed to set up hummingbird feeders, wait for some birds to start to come in (this is a location where they are up occasionally but not all the time so the birds react pretty quickly after the feeders are set up) and then hang some flowers and perches to allow us to get more natural looking shots.  So by the time all of that was accomplished the sun was fairly bright.  After taking a few shots I recommended that everyone put their flashes on.  I lightened this image globally some in photoshop which had the result of making the shadows not as harsh but also made the flowers too bright.

Brazilian Ruby, female Canon 5D3 500F4 1/2000 F8, iso 800, Av mode, evaluative metering -0.7, 580ex fill flash expsoure compensation at -1.3.  Here is an image of the same bird with fill flash (actually the prior image was taken in the same burst as this one but the flash hadn't recycled).  Notice how the lighting of the whole image is so much more even, there is just a hint of shadows on the bird's breast and the flower is exposed better.  Note that I dialed in -1.3 on the flash exposure compensation.  This is the other important setting for using fill flash during the day.  If you leave the flash exposure compensation at 0 while photographing birds with flash during the day the vast majority of the time you will get an image that looks overflashed.  That is the use of flash is obvious and the image is unattractive, ideally if flash is used well during the day it's not obvious that flash has been used.  So typically you will want to dial in somewhere between -1.0 and -3.0 flash exposure compensation to make the image look more natural.  In this case the 1/2000 of a second reduces the flash power so I needed to be closer to -1.0 than -3.0 to get the correct amount of flash. 

Black and Yellow Broadbill photographed October 2015 at the Trang Botanical Gardens, Thailand.  Canon 5D3 500F4 1.4x 1/160 F7.1, iso 1600.  It was a thrill to photograph this bird at eye level from the canopy walkway after our guide Ian called it in.  This was one of the first images I took of the bird, while it was fairly dark the lighting where it first landed was fairly even so flash wasn't absolutely necessary although it probably would have improved this shot a bit. 

Black and Yellow Broadbill, Canon 5D3 500F4 1.4x 1/640 F7.1, iso 1600.  Then the Broadbill moved to a branch where he was in the shade and a lot of the background was in sun.  Here is an image without flash, this is an obvious situation where you need flash so I turned it on at this point.  Without flash in this case to get the exposure on the bird correct you have to completely blow out the background to the point where it might not be recoverable.  In this image the bird is  too dark (especially the blacks) as I didn't add positive exposure compensation but the background is still too bright.   In curves I brought up the blacks and reduced the highlights which helps the difficult exposure but also makes the image flatter. 

Black and Yellow Broadbill Canon 5D3 500F4 1.4x 1/800 F7.1, iso 1600, evaluative metering at 0, 580ex fill flash at -2.0 flash exposure compensation.  This is one of the first images I took of this bird with flash (it was nice of him to hang around).  I used some of the same adjustments in Adobe Camera Raw as the last image lifting the darks a bit and reducing the highlights.  You can see how much better the detail is in the blacks having used some fill flash and that the overall contrast is much improved.  With this very bright background to balance the bright lighting in the background I probably should have been at about -1.0 to -1.3 flash exposure compensation and then also added a bit of negative exposure compensation to the evaulative metering to bring down the background even more. 

Black and Yellow Broadbill, Canon 5D3 500F4 1.4x 1/400 F7.1, iso 800, 580ex fill flash -1.0.  After the previous image I viewed the images on my LCD and thought it wasn't quite enough flash so I changed the flash exposure compensation to -1.0.  Then the bird moved to a different tree, at this point it wasn't quite as backlit.  While I like this image a lot as it shows the beautiful black and yellow plumage very well, I think the image is just slightly overflashed.  To me the bird looks a bit pasted into the scene without enough depth.  This is one of the effects of using too much flash. 

Black and Yellow Broadbill, Canon 5D3 500F4 1.4x 1/800 F7.1, 580ex fill flash at -1.7.  I adjusted the flash again reducing it a bit.  Again the bird moved to a different branch but the lighting was similar to the previous image, with a bit brighter background.  In this image I think the amount of fill flash that I used was perfect in that it lit up the bird well, kept the background from being too bright, while at the same time the bird and scene look natural to me with good depth and not overflashed.  While there are other instructors who lead workshops that focus on formulas for the amount of flash to use for me it's much more of an art than a science.  I have certain starting points (generally about -2.0 FEC) and then depending on the situation I adjust the amount of negative flash exposure compensation that I use. But as a beginning fill flash user as I said at the start of the article if you remember to shoot in high speed synch mode and to use some negative flash exposure compensation you will be off to a good start in using fill flash for bird photography.  In future newsletters I will discuss in more detail when to use more or less flash exposure compensation.  In the meantime you can read some previous newsletters from a few years ago here and here if you want to read more about using flash for bird photography.