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Since the hackers decided to delete all the posts I thought I'd repost these two I took yesterday with my 500 f4...





Paul

I like the first, and it's full name is Eastern Yellow Robin. Exposure looks good and you've got a nice catchlight in the eye.

The second shot looks a bit flat and the angle is a bit steep, if you're going to shoot them while hopping on the ground you need to get as low as you can to the ground. A Skimmer Groundpod is ideal for these situations.

I was as close to the ground as the tripod/lens combo would let me go

(Tripod = 0cms, head = 10cms, lens = 10 cms)

I think he was downhill though so that wouldn't help

Paul

Yeah, that's the advantage of the groundpod. The head sits on the ground practically.

Love the easern yellow robin shot - they are gorgeous arent' they! If I can ask - what lens is the 500?
Rel

Nikkor 500 f4 AF-S (first version not the newer one)

I'm in love with this lens *glances over at it and smiles*

I really need help!! lol

Paul

I know how you feel - I think I would go to sleep with the 105 micro under my pillow if I could !!! But you take much better photos
Rel

 PS. Paul you could do with a bit more DOF on the legs aswell on #1. The legs are very soft, note the tail is also.

Yeah that was suggested in last nights discussions before the forums went down...Grr

I was thinking of going to f5.6 or f8 but was too scared it would lower my shutter speed too much. I didn't want to push the iso above 400.

Next time I go out there (hopefully next monday if the weather stays good) I'll give the smaller appatures a try.

Here is another Superb Fairy-Wren ... probably my sharpest from yesterday... still not as sharp as I'd like but it looks ok as an A4 print...This one also suffers from soft legs (not enough DOF) and could have used some fill flash I think. It was a bad time of the day.

I somehow accidently set the camera to -1.0v Exposure Comp so they needed pushing up in post processing





Thanks for all of your input everyone. Every comment helps

Paul

Beautiful subjects - but i would be interested to see how you go in more favourable lighting conditions. I agree with what people have said about general softness and lack of DOF on these shots. Im sure as you get more experienced with this lens you will start to produce wonderful stuff. Keep at it - it shows a lot of promise!

Are you using flash and a better beamer?

I'd seriously consider getting an SB800 and a better beamer. I think you need it. If you're using flash at the moment you're not getting enough output.

No I'm not using flash.

I haven't really dipped into how to use fill flash for this sort of photography yet. I read your post the other day on using flash for birds... I will give that a try..

I have the SB-800. No better beamer though. What's one of them and what does it do? Is it like a diffusion dome?

Thanks

Paul

Better beamers, are flash extenders to use on the front of the SB800. It's basically a fresnal lens attached to a mounting bracket to extend flash distance. It's really a must for 300MM+ focal lengths. Especially if the subject is some distance from the focal plane. You might want to also look at using a flash bracket such as the Wimberley Telephoto Combo #4 or the RRS 91B, and an SC-17 or SC-28 cord. This will take the flash off of the same axis as the lens and help to reduce steel eye.

You can get away without using the flash extender and brackets I'd say for the small birds as they're usually quite close anyway. I really suggest having the flash permanently mounted though and try it out. Having a flash brings out more contrast in the bird, reduces the flatness, might also help you with having more DOF aswell as you seem to be trying to use the most of ambient light, and if there is no sun it will add a nice catchlight in the birds eye.

Don't be afraid to use it, at first I never bothered and have since decided to use it. Stick the SB800 and use TTL or TTL-BL, don't put any defusers on (you can try if you're close to the bird). Then adjust the EV (up down arrows) compensation to -1.3. I usually shoot using -EV. Then just set your aperture and shutter speed as per normal.

If the in camera meter bar is at 0 then you're using available light to expose correctly and just using the flash to fill shadows. You can experiment with mixing ambient/flash, by adjusting shutter speed and aperture. For instance if you go narrower aperture to get more DOF you'll see the bar is in the negative. What will happen is in the flash prefires it will tell there isn't enough light to expose correctly and will so give more flash output then say at 0 on the metering bar. So this will start using the flash more as a source of main light then as fill.

Now I could be all wrong here but that's what I've found by experimenting. You might already know all this. However if you did, I can't see why you wouldn't be using your flash

To get the best range out of a Better Beamer you should lock the zoom of your flash to the 50mm position. That will give the most reach with the fresnel lens design.

Otherwise your flash will zoom to its longest position and the resulting flash area will be larger than it could be (ie. less bright). Not quite intuitive, but the lens inverts the effect of the zoom. It's not a serious issue, but worth looking into if you want to get the most out of the beamer. If your flash doesn't have manual zoom settings you have to just live with it (my current EX flash doesn't, although I can force it to the 50mm position regardless).

Actually, the 50mm figure specified in the Beamer documentation is geared to full-frame cameras. Do some tests shooting against a blank wall and I suspect you'll find that for a DX-format camera the best position may be slightly "wider". It all depends on how short a focal length you're intending to use. At the 50mm flash position it should suit lenses as short as 200mm (given the 1.5x crop factor).
At the same time, the more you fine-tune the projected flash area, the more you have to fine-tune the alignment of the flash and beamer to avoid darkened edges to your images...

Thanks for the tip Dave, haven't used my BB yet as I only got it in the last week or so. Plus I have no lens to use it on

I'll quiz some of the nature gurus about this to see what they do. They'll probably turn around and say they use the flash on fully manual anyway

You mean you'll ask us on NPN or NatureScapes?

Yes, I'll talk to Anthony Medici or Alan Murphy on NSN. PS. Haven't seen you post on NSN?

I may be a Canon person and Tony and Alan are Nikon guys, but the results will be the same. They can probably give you SB800-specific advice.

Have a look at this article at NPN from a couple of years ago.

Look, you're probably right but I wanted to consult guys who use the same gear. I've been probing these guys over the past few weeks regarding gear to buy

Tah for the link.

Thanks for all that very helpful info on using flash... It's something I've often thought about but never tried.... that will soon change.

Just to clafify you kipper.... when you use the flash you set the camera in full manual mode... set the exposure for the background and use the flash to fill the rest with a -1.3ev adjustment.... is that correct? What do you do when the required shutter speed goes above 1/500? (apart from buy a D2X with it's high-speed sync that is!!)

The Better Beamer sounds interesting. Can I ask where you bought yours from?

Thanks once again for the info

Paul

Well the high speed sync according to some is a wank anyway. Well Ken Rockwell thinks it is....lol.

I use mostly manual mode on my camera to set ss and aperture. You can achieve the same effect that I discribed using Aperture Priority and using EV/Exp compensation.

What I meter for really depends. I mostly shoot in spot or center weighted spot when shooting birds as I want to expose the feathers. If they have traces of white (or light colors) on them I'll try and expose for that or a few stops down from the lightest color on the bird.

If you need to go past 1/500th because there is a lot of sun. You have a few options:

1) Turn the flash off
2) Tape over the contacts of the flash and use it in manual mode to go past 1/500th
3) Get an ND4 and ND8 drop in filter for the lens

I got the better beamer off of NPN, but NSN sell them aswell. Cost me about $50/$60 all up shipped here. With a spare lens aswell plus a lot of velcro to attach it to the flash.

I also got my beamer from NPN. Like Darryl I mainly shoot in manual (occasionally Av-priority though). That's the ambient exposure. The flash exposure is different (I won't go into the specifics of the E-TTL system as this seems to be a Nikon thread). At least on the Canon bodies you can do high-speed flash past the sync speed (1/200, 1/250, or 1/500 depending on the body) right up to 1/[48]000, but the power drops off quite rapidly (which the beamer helps with).

Remember, with fill flash we just need a tiny amount to fill in some of the shadows, add a catchlight, etc. So the range of the flash is longer than you might expect if you're used to using flash as the main light. The beamer helps extend the range even further. Even if you don't need the distance, the beamer helps reduce the amount of power needed by the flash and thus reduces the recharge time.

Yep, I mentioned that in another thread Dave about the recycle times due to the power consumption reduction.

However that thread is now deleted because of the fagget hacker.