580Ex newbie

[crockny]

Hi -- I'm a Canon shooter and bought the 580Ex -- I want to try it with my bird photography but I have to say I'm having a hard time figuring things out.

First of all, I keep reading about TTL but see no setting for that on the flash - just ETTL, multi and manual, which I have kinda figured out how to use and change the output ... but ... someone on one of the sites talked about setting a high shutter speed and I don't see any way to do that since it won't go above 250 ... help! This is my first experience with flash of any kind and it's all a mystery to me ...

[zona5101]

this should help:
EOS Documentation Project - Speedlite 580EX PDF*

or this if it's the II
EOS Documentation Project - Speedlite 580EX II PDF*

for all intents and purposes, ttl=ettl. eTTL is canon's brand naming. (nikons is iTTL)

High Speed sync is controlled by your camera body

[inkista]

Actually, with Canons, you can turn high-speed sync on on the flash, too. The button with the lightning bolt and H next to it is the high-speed sync mode button. Press and hold that until the icon shows up on the LCD, and the flash is in high-speed sync mode, and you can use a higher shutter speed.

HOWEVER. You need to know how high-speed sync works, and why flash kind of sucks for birding.

Light falls off over distance by an inverse square rule; that is the light falloff is proportional to the square of the distance from the light to the subject. Double the distance, and you get 1/4 the light. Triple the distance, and you get 1/9th the light, quadruple it and you get 1/16th, and so on. It's pretty rapid. Birds tend not to be that close, so getting the flash to reach them is already going to be an issue.

High-speed sync happens because of how the camera shutter works. You have two curtains: a front and rear curtain, and it's the gap between those two curtains as they travel across the sensor that determines your shutter speed. 1/250s is your max. sync speed, where the gap between the curtains is large enough to leave your entire sensor uncovered all at the same time. You go any faster than that, and the gap will be smaller than your sensor, and the flash will only be able to illuminate part of the frame: you'll get black bars at the top and/or bottom of the image without high-speed sync.

High-speed sync is where the camera and flash communicate to do synchronized pulses of light as the gap sweeps across the sensor, so there's even flash illumination across the whole frame. BUT, because of charging/recycle requirements, you're going to be cutting down the light output from the flash, the faster you go. You pretty much lose one stop of light output for every stop of shutter speed you gain. So, at 1/500s, you'll be at 1/2 the power output eTTL would have normally set you at. Again, getting the light to reach the bird is going to be tough.

You may want to contemplate getting a Better Beamer, which is basically a big plastic fresnel lens you stick in front of the flash to concentrate the beam and throw it farther (like a lighthouse beacon). But again, the effectiveness is relative.

But generally, flash only gets you so much for birding.

[Doug Sundseth]

First, if you're using the flash as your dominant light (that is, if the ambient contribution to the exposure is minimal), shutter speed isn't relevant. The flash duration is faster than the shutter anyway, and it will freeze the action quite well.

If you're only using the flash for fill, then you might need to go above your max sync speed to freeze the action, in which case all the problems that Inkista mentioned apply.

Mostly, though, flash isn't useful for birding unless you can get the flash quite close to the bird*. Fast, long glass and high ISOs are the tools of the birder, and that means money.

* For some sorts of bird photography, you can set up a flash at a feeder and shoot from a blind while triggering the flash remotely.

[crockny]

So people who get very sharp photos of hummingbirds are doing what????

I see lots of people using the Better Beamer which seems to work quite well in the woods -- I was shooting next to someone using it and the only good picture I got was when his flash went off!

[inkista]

Originally Posted by crockny

So people who get very sharp photos of hummingbirds are doing what????

Living somewhere really sunny , or setting off the flash remotely (probably with radio triggers), and placing it nearer to the hummingbird. You'll notice that most of those shots involve a feeder of some kind.

[crockny]

This all came to a head because there is a rufous hummingbird hanging out in Manhattan in complete building shade and I've been trying to get a decent photo -- I got some OK ones but nothing spectacular -- I have a handheld 400mm 5.6 ... I could probably pick up a better beamer tomorrow at B&H ...