From time to time I plan on posting images that will serve educational purposes. My first here is of a Prong-billed Barbet, photographed at the LaPaz Waterfall Gardens in Costa Rica, last December. Here is the shot:
The bird was posing fairly nicely, within shooting distance of my Canon 100/f2.8 Macro lens (I was mainly shooting butterflies, frogs, etc.). But there was virtually no light on the bird, and while there wasn't much light behind him the background was significantly brighter. I normally prefer Ambient Light photography, and took a couple of shots this way, but wanted to try some using the flash as the main source of light to illuminate the bird. (With virtually no light on the bird, "fill-flash" wouldn't be sufficient to get what I wanted.)
The Ambient Light shot was ISO 400, f/4, 1/250 second. I decreased ISO to 200, to reduce exposure and darken the background. I switched on my flash (MR-24EX - again, I was geared up for macro work), and took some shots. The challenge here is that ETTL2 was getting "fooled" by the relatively small size of the bird (the image here represents a moderate crop of the original), and with the background quite a distance away, it was markedly overexposing the bird. I had to cut back on Flash Exposure Compensation (FEC), ultimately to -2 EV in order to get the proper exposure, but this was somewhat a trial and error process.
The result is still a little "too flashed" for my taste, but it is still useful for instructional purposes here.
After moving on to another subject, my brain finally got into gear, and I remembered that this would be a perfect situation for FEL - Flash Exposure Lock. This is a feature on Canon cameras where you place the central focus point on your subject, hit the FEL button, and the flash exposure will be calculated for that specific area. This way, it wouldn't be "fooled" by anything else in the background, the relative size of the bird in the frame, etc.
I used this in the next shot - the Emerald Toucanet, this time with FEC at 0, since I was using a relatively "neutral" area on the bird for the FEC measurement. Here is the result:
Any comments, questions on this topic welcome.
The bird was posing fairly nicely, within shooting distance of my Canon 100/f2.8 Macro lens (I was mainly shooting butterflies, frogs, etc.). But there was virtually no light on the bird, and while there wasn't much light behind him the background was significantly brighter. I normally prefer Ambient Light photography, and took a couple of shots this way, but wanted to try some using the flash as the main source of light to illuminate the bird. (With virtually no light on the bird, "fill-flash" wouldn't be sufficient to get what I wanted.)
The Ambient Light shot was ISO 400, f/4, 1/250 second. I decreased ISO to 200, to reduce exposure and darken the background. I switched on my flash (MR-24EX - again, I was geared up for macro work), and took some shots. The challenge here is that ETTL2 was getting "fooled" by the relatively small size of the bird (the image here represents a moderate crop of the original), and with the background quite a distance away, it was markedly overexposing the bird. I had to cut back on Flash Exposure Compensation (FEC), ultimately to -2 EV in order to get the proper exposure, but this was somewhat a trial and error process.
The result is still a little "too flashed" for my taste, but it is still useful for instructional purposes here.
After moving on to another subject, my brain finally got into gear, and I remembered that this would be a perfect situation for FEL - Flash Exposure Lock. This is a feature on Canon cameras where you place the central focus point on your subject, hit the FEL button, and the flash exposure will be calculated for that specific area. This way, it wouldn't be "fooled" by anything else in the background, the relative size of the bird in the frame, etc.
I used this in the next shot - the Emerald Toucanet, this time with FEC at 0, since I was using a relatively "neutral" area on the bird for the FEC measurement. Here is the result:
Any comments, questions on this topic welcome.