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Friday 6 November 2015

Catching Bats on camera



Bats - Fire at them as  they fly by

Equipment :  

EOS60D 17-40mm EF F4 lens 
Speedlite 580EXII flash

Setting : ISO 800, Speed 1/2500, F8, Prefocus the lens [ so there is no time lag as the camera do not need to find focus ]

Rationale : Need to freeze them in - flight and illuminated them with flash.  

Find a spot where they will fly by you. It was a sight to behold as the flash reflected back from their pupils like head lamp of a night flying devil

Hand holding the camera works and given a slightly larger FOV you can catch them without looking through the LCD or anything. Practise makes perfect. Shoot from the hip

Earlier attempts with a Note 4 mobile with flash on a bat stopping momentary on a branch produce  a blurring fuzzy object as the mobile came try to focus and then released the flash.  I tried the Nikon P900 with a better result but the kill rate was low. Then i said what the heck lets use SLR with dedicated flash MINUS the tripod. Prefocus works but there are incidents you see the fellow came right at you and too late to refocus...

SO far these are the frontal illuminated ones....

EOS 60 D


WIder zoom out than the image above

Another one 

Yet Another one