Bat photograpy

LCPete

LCPete

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Hi has anyone here managed to get shots of bats in flight :eek:

It's way beyond my expertise but wondered if anyone here had done it with bats free flying in the wild ie not studio.

Very difflicult I imagine, I guess it needs a good flash setup and lots of luck.

I work nights and in the Summer we get bats every night that come into the (very large) shed to catch midges
Pete
 
Pete I would guess you need to set a long exposure if it is really dark and fire the flash when a bat flies into the area you've pre-set up, I think the pro use infra-red triggers to do this. You could try holding the flash opening the shutter and chancing your arm though, it could be fun ;)
 
We have a couple of bats who frequent our eucalyptus tree round about dusk time in the summer. I have tried hundreds of times to get a pic and only managed a half decent one once. This is it, I put it on one of my eclipse photos and can't find the disc with the original on just now so have posted the the eclipse and bat.
It was very hit and miss, the bat pic was taken on my minolta p&s camera. As I said, I just kept waiting until the bats flew around into sight and just kept clicking. The flash caught this one.
eclipseand.jpg
 
Back end of August/September last year I had a couple of bats come every night at 9.30pm on the dot, for at least 2 weeks.
They flew in, did a few loop the loops, a few circles of the garden individually, and then they were gone to the next.
I got to know their sequence, the areas of the garden where the best opertunity of a capture was, for instance, on the second lap they'd take a slightly different line and duck between my garage and the house and for 10 feet, where there for the taking.
So for 2 weeks I sat, waiting, sb600 off camera, 80-200 waving about and not once did I get within a country mile of them in frame never mind in focus.
They're just too damn fast to track, you need them either just taking flight from stationary, or some complicated tech ir trigger gizmos contraption.
I didn't catch them, but I damn well enjoyed watching them...:)
 
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