Fill Flash Outdoors

bri wig

bri wig

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Brian
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Can any member help me out with a problem?,was out this weekend photographing kingfishers,first time out with the 580EX,kingfisher 10mts sat on a post,camera settings,Apert.f8, ISO400, evaluative metering, AV , tried flash comp on -3 to start with (the flash comp overides the EV ),shutter speed blinking,adjustments made to stop blinking but the f. number increases which I don't want (background to busy)..What am I doing wrong. Is there a way of photographing at f8?? can anyone take me through it . PLEASE. regards Brian :shrug:
 
Put the flash on high speed sync (FP) - read the manual, it will tell you how to do this. This will allow you shoot at high shutter speeds without compromising the shallow aperture :) It usually means the flash will sync at at 1/250th or 1/500th (or above maybe)
 
I take it the blinking shutter speed value was because the camera couldn't find a quick enough shutter speed i.e. too much light.

My only other suggestion would be to drop the ISO to 100 to give you two stops of extra leeway and set everything to manual to fool the camera, including the flash. Then at least you can set the exposure values you want and then inject a manual amount of flash into the shot, say 1/16th for example, which should give you just enough punch to light the shot.

I take it that a high shutter is desirable given that KF fly like the wind and for me, this would be an approach I'd at least try to see if it work - cameras are greta but they're easily fooled. :)

Maybe some example shots of what you've achieved so far posted up here might give us some idea of where things aren't going quite to plan :)
 
Thanks for the info specialman,no images, binned what I had,will try what you said to see if it will work. Still playing about with this flash game.Any one any other suggestions?????:thumbs:
 
Hi Bri and welcome to TP :)

First question is why are you using flash when the light level appears to be quite good? At 10m outdoors, the flash will struggle to do much, and it will be even more feeble in HSS mode which reduces range a lot.

The shutter speed doesn't blink when you're in HSS mode - only in normal flash mode when the ambient light is too bright for the maximum x-sync speed :thinking:
 
Thanks for the reply HoppyUK,firstly the bird was sat in shade and I thought I would try a bit of fill flash to try the speedlite out (being a newby to flash and NOT REALLY knowing too much about it),anyway I thought you could use flash anytime to fetch detail out in feathers etc.:shrug:So just been in the garden and set things up and noticed the speedlite was'nt in HSS,tried it and like you've said the shutter did'dt blink.Will try it out this week-end:thumbs: Thanks for that ,regards Brian:thumbs:
 
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