Shooting/Lighting bats in flight

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vaizki

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Jukka
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At my summer place we have a family of bats that have taken to hunting moths etc right in front of our porch. They do fly-bys about 5-10m from where we sit, so I took out the camera on a tripod, tried to take long exposures with a lot of different ISO / Aperture combinations and manually fired a flash (Metz AF-1 with GN 58) whenever a bat was in view.

I basically got nothing except pictures without bats visible or pictures with bright UFOs where the bats probably were.

Any help with settings? Or is this hopeless? I have a pair of 200Ws studio flashes at home I could take along next time if more light is needed..
 
Have shot Fruit Bats myself (incaptivity) inflight myself, best advise, set teh cam in manual, shutterspeed to your flash sync speed, apatuer of about F11, pick a spot you know they are likly to pass, then focus there, then set teh focus to manual so it does not change, if you have a remote release, use it, so you dont have to look through the viewfinder, then as the bat passes you focus area, click the shuttter, will take some trial and error to get right.
 
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Rough Edges said:
As bats are protected, would you not need a license to do this? Could this not be deemed interference with a species?

I am genuinely interested to know some clarification on this..
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Nope, they're flying about in the wild. It's not like you would be disturbing them roosting!
 
Rough Edges said:
As bats are protected, would you not need a license to do this? Could this not be deemed interference with a species?

I am genuinely interested to know some clarification on this..
Click to expand...

I wouldn't know as I'm from Finland.. But yes I guess that if you interfere with their roosting or put them off their feeding schedule you are disturbing them enough to warrant a permit of some sort in the uk.

These bats don't seem to mind in the least so I must be doing it wrong :lol:
 
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