How do you make birds stand out in color?

[andnowimbroke]

I was driving home after reading the answers I got from the post (as I have no internet at home), and it hit me. I thought of a picture I saw ages ago in a grade school science book I think. It had a red apple with a green light shining on it and we had to guess what color it was going to look like. I pasted that thought in my head with what you guys were saying about how hard it would be to get the colors to act right in such crappy weather and everything made sense. A white feather is going to reflect whatever light you throw at it, but if you only shine a blue light at it, that's all your going to get back. The good news is I only wasted a crappy day in the learning process. Next weekend I'll get closer (assuming the ground is firm enough past the gate I was standing at) and do it for real with it in manual, WB on possibly cloudy or AWB, Apeture around 8, shutter around 1/1000 sec., and a get little sun on their bellies! Can't wait.
Can I sneak in a FORUM question in here too? Are the pictures I put in forums tied directly to the ones I uploaded to my folder? What I'm getting at is if I start deleting some "junk" pics out of my folder, will the thread I used them in still have them or will it be a big red "x" in it's place, or is the information for that thread stored somewhere else?


Scaleusa, I'm going to be getting a flash...someday... when I'm not broke. Will it reach that far? I'm pretty new to all this. I guess it will. Twenty feet is all it would have to go and that should be do-able.


For any else stupid enough to shoot birds like this, turn your camera portraitstyle. I kept loosing the dudes when they would cut back away from my left eye. Shooting it the other way gave me more sight to the right. This is prolly pasted in every book about birds. I don't know. I tend to learn things the hard way

[scalesusa]

Scaleusa, I'm going to be getting a flash...someday... when I'm not broke. Will it reach that far? I'm pretty new to all this. I guess it will. Twenty feet is all it would have to go and that should be do-able.



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There is a simple tool to attach to your flash called the better beamer. i've read about it, but never used one until today. It increases the range of your flash by about 3X by focusing the light into a tighter beam. They cost about $40.00.


When mine came in the mail this morning, I tried it out right away. It does fill in nicely, which is necessary if there are shadows.





Here is a shot without flash. Bright sun, harsh lighting with lots of shadows, no matter how hard I tried to minimize them in lightroom.












The second one is taken with the flash, and shadows are much less of a issue, even with no manipulation.

[andnowimbroke]

That's INSANE!!! Same time of day and everything? HUGE difference. I guess I could put off a double cheeseburger or two to help pay for one. Are there any negative effects to using one? I'm sure it would focus the light to much to use on something right in front of you, but birds at a distance...sounds all good

[scalesusa]

They were taken a few minutes apart. What happened was that my batteries on the flash were weak, and ran down so that a few shots did not get flash until I realized what was happening. With your eye to the viewfinder, you can't see the flash. It is hard to see in bright sunlight even if you are looking for it.

[andnowimbroke]

Ordered my beamer Thursday on your advice. Thanks for the tip.

[Jonathan Huyer]

scalesusa, I love your flash shot. It's incredibly sharp, and your depth of field is bang-on. I would suggest one quick post-processing fix: Eliminate one of the two sparkles in the eye. A double sparkle looks a bit alien to me, and it also makes it obvious that you used artificial lighting. Just my personal taste. Cheers.

[scalesusa]

Thanks for your helpful comment. I revised the photo. It was taken with my new 100-400mm lens with 1.4X TC. Focuses kind of slowly on my MK III, but it can be used. With the TC and all, it is actually f14, but the background is nicely blurred becaus it is quite a way behind the bird.