Learning flash for wildlife photography

I’ve been a wildlife photographer for many years but I never wanted to hassle with using a flash so never learned. I decided I should change that so I tried a few shots today at my bird feeder.

Do you think I got the right balance of flash to natural light? At this point I don’t know enough to self critique.

Canon 7d II, 100-400mm II, external speed light mounted on camera with Better Beamer, 400mm, 1/800, f7.1, ISO 640, flash EC -1

You may only download this image to demonstrate post-processing techniques.

This does not look flashed at all on my iPad Air 2.
I think this is a good use of fill flash. No concerns about the techs. I have used fill flash on 50% of images shot in the rainy season (Jan 1 to Dec 31) here in the Pacific Northwest. Typically, I will use minus 3 to minus 1 depending on the light levels and BG. As with anything, the more you practice, the better you get at figuring out the correct exposure.

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I’m on an Air2 as well.

For my tastes the balance front to back is good, but I downloaded it and opened it with Photoshop’s RAW filter to fiddle with overall exposure. I’m not posting because of the uncertainties in using this machine, but by using the Exposure slider it “feels” about 1/3-stop over-exposed. I plugged into my Dell desktop monitor for another look and came away feeling the same way, but that one is not yet calibrated either.

You don’t say if you dialed any reduction into your flash, but I’m not acquainted with Canon these days and don’t know whether EC-1 is a flash model or a compensation. Most times I fill with 1-2 stops less light, i.e., dialing in a -1 or -2 into the flash depending on the tone of my subject. If that is indeed an indication you had reduced flash output by one stop, I’d try something on the order of -1.3 or even -1.6.

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Thanks Hank. Yes, “flash EC-1” was my way of abbreviating flash exposure compensation. I appreciate the time you took to download and I think you are right. I think it’s most evident on the tree limb.

Huh… This conversation just solved a mystery for me Terri, and I thank you for that. I’m using 5 strobes in my current work, and I’ve been struggling with under-exposure in some arrays. No end of strobe repositioning and yes, a little dash of cursing has been involved. I just checked all of them and three have -1.6 dialed in, leftovers from their usual role in outdoor fill flash. I’m so used to seeing it that it didn’t even register when setting up. Woops… All fixed now! :blush:

Note to everyone- Probably a good idea to remove EC’s before stowing your strobes. :thinking:

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Hi Terri:

I’m a big advocate for the use of flash in this kind of photography. It can really add to the overall image. I think this looks pretty good, but as others have noted, just a bit bright. The perch is the part that is showing it the most for me, while the bird is just a bit brighter than I would like. You noted you had FEC (Flash exposure compensation) at -1. I would have also used ambient light exposure compensation of about -1 or maybe a touch more to help tame the background. That’s where the real power of flash begins to shine is being able to control ambient light and the light contributed by the flash separately.

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Terri, I have zero ideas about flash so I won’t comment on that but participate and learn from what others are saying. But as for the final image is concerned, I think what’s perhaps a little too bright here is the bottom half of the image. At least you probably want to consider a gradient burn to the lower half of the image. Also, I think if you dodge and burn the image a little, it will make a difference. You can do a lot more, but this is what I did in 5 minutes.

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By darkening the tree trunk, it seems to have increased the lighting or the emphasis of the lighting on the bird so now I would decrease the flash by another half one-stop. This time, I am looking at the image of my large monitor. I think I still prefer the original image and maybe of in yet added to the original image would solve the problem of the lighting. Once again even the original image may look better with half stop reduction in the flash output. My two cents worth.

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Nothing like a glut of opinions, Terri. To me this looks a bit overflashed as well as maybe a touch overexposed. What I’m going by is the lack of contrast in the branch and the way the feet of the bird kind of blend into the perch. To me, that indicates that there’s a bit too much light coming directly from the camera and eliminating shadows. You picked a good place to practice.

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