Nighttime Birding

Gallery: AvianPosted July 4, 201189 views4 comments

Well, it seemed like nighttime birding anyway. I had a week at Cannon Beach in Oregon with the family. My usual routine on vacation...get up right before dawn and bird/shoot while the wife and son sleep in and eat breakfast. I had high hopes of getting some target forest species, including Varied Thrush.

So...I'd head out every morning at 5:30 and go to Ecola State Park. Wow! Talk about dismal lighting for these guys! Even on the 2 sunny days, there wasn't much light to work with. I NEVER use flash as primary lighting, only for fill, but it didn't take long for me to realize I had to change strategy.

I heard these guys all over the place. Every once in a while, I'd catch a glimpse of one. But for all my trying, this is the only frame I'd ever even consider posting out on NPN!!

Canon 50D, 400 5.6L, 1/60, f5.6, 430EX @ -1. Admit I had little clue on what to set flash for use as primary lighting, not for fill. Just set it at aperature priority mode, ISO 400, FEC @ -1, and it seemed to work pretty pretty well. Any advice on shooting in these conditions would be welcome though!!

Also not used to dealing with the steely eye, so didn't do much with it here.

And these guys weren't even my biggest frustration! That was all the singing Winter Wrens that acted more like mice than birds.

Comments

4 comments

Comment posted by Nate Chappell on July 5, 2011 at 5:01 PM

You probably did about as well as you could here Terry. Sometimes in these cases with such little light I will shoot on manual and go to something like 1/250, F8, flash on with no compensation, iso 200. The reason being the image is going to look (over)flashed either way and that way you are increasing your depth of field and image quality by going to a lower iso. Cool to get him with the bug and I like the mossy perch.

Registered on February 1, 2006, 1158 Posts, 19528 Comments

Comment posted by Ron Dudley on July 5, 2011 at 8:26 PM

Hi Terry, I agree with Nate. Though I know very little about flash something seems just a little off here with it. I do like the food in the beak and the interesting perch.

Registered on March 30, 2007, 437 Posts, 10915 Comments

Comment posted by Dennis Plank on July 5, 2011 at 10:41 PM

Nice to get one at all, Terry. I live in this neck of the woods and I think I've even seen one twice. Winter wrens are a bit better-I might have seen half a dozen and they're allover the place. You sure picked a couple of tough ones. Nice job for the conditions.

Registered on January 28, 2008, 1767 Posts, 23192 Comments

Comment posted by Doug Backlund on July 7, 2011 at 8:16 AM

When flash is my only or primary light source, I always turn off hi-speed sync on the flash unit, set the camera to manual exposure, use max sync shutter speed and choose my aperture. You can get very sharp and well exposed images, just relying on ETTL. Wish I had any photos of this species that I could post here!

Registered on September 29, 2005, 252 Posts, 3380 Comments