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took these this morning, beautiful dove and a pretty little sparrow.
pa

Images aren't showing Pa

problem solved hopfully




sorry about that
pa

I love the banding around the doves neck. Perhaps the sparrow photo would be more striking if you tweaked the colour of the pink ledge it's standing on to match one of the colours in his (?her) plumage? Just a thought.

his (?her) plumage?

is a male sparrow.

the female doesnt have the dark brown/black on the face.

we used to get lots of little sparrows around here but havent really seen them for ages. the native birds seem to have driven them away

looks like both could do with a little fill flash though

Steve

looks like both could do with a little fill flash though

I have wondered about shooting colourful birds in low light - what is the difference between fill flash and stock standard flash?

fill flash might be used if you metered a scene which was backlit for instance.
both these birds appear to have the light coming from behind them (not directly though.) the camera is reading that light and setting correct exposure for it but making the main subjects slightly dark.
If you metered from the birds you may well get them nicely exposed but the backgrounds would no doubt be overexposed.

taking the same shots with a flash set at -1ev for example, or higher (even up to -2 or beyond) would provide additional light for the bird but make little difference to the background. additionally it may add a hightlight in the eye.

I would describe full flash as when not enough light exists to make a particular exposure so you use the flash at 0ev so it is 100% responsible for exposing the shot.

Fill flash with birds in particular can really bring colours out of plumage because it reacts with the oils etc.

too little is better than too much though because you dont want the subject to look over flashed

you find a lot of nature photogs use flash on birds a lot of the time

Steve

Thanks Steve - I'll go home, pull out the Canon manual and work out how to do that. I didn't even realise you could control the amount of flash - as a result I have virtually never used it.

in the old days you had to control things manually, setting the camera aperture to say f8 but telling the flash you were using f5.6.

cant speak for the canons but the nikon sb800 has a rocker switch on the back and you can reduce the amount of flash you want and still be under automatic control

Steve

thanks steve griffen for pointing out that the pics were not visable,and mitchell,steve, the dove was about 8 mtrs away and sparrow 4mtrs, i have only the flash on camera i had it on for the sparrow.
pa