After the less than fortunate experiences of the Friday, I allowed myself another photography session on Sundaymorning. As the weather was drab again, it thought it would be a good idea to try some studio lighting techniques on the birds.
I took a single flash and my recently acquired wireless Ebay-triggers. I had tried them before with little success. Either the flash would not fire at all, or the flash would not sync, which means it went off but did not show on the photograph. With new batteries the successrate increased, but not yet enough to my liking.
The goal I had set for myself was to make a photograph that showes only the outlines of a bird, but enough to make the bird species easily recognizable. For that, I needed to put the so-called rimlighting technique to good use. A good thing I had thoroughly studied studio lighting techniques in the recent past!
I did not get many opportunities to actually push the trigger, and from the 6 shots or so I took in 4 hours, only one was good enough. With birds other than the Crested Tit shown here, the outlines do not show clearly enough, which is vital to the succes of such an image. These rimlit shots seem to work best with furry mammals. I don’t think there are many bird species other than the Crested Tit that will provide good results. But I will try again, and any interesting results will be posted here.
Crested Tit; Canon 1D Mark III w. 70-200/4; 1/125s at F16 and ISO 400; Tripod and a single wireless flash.
