Nikon SB 910 Settings w/D800 for Birds in Flight

[Sol Shamilzadeh]

Hello Everyone,

I would like to know the "best" settings required for BIF using the Nikon SB 910 along with my Nikon D800.
Note that I will be using my Nikon 300 f/4 coupled with the TC 1.4 for an effective reach of 420mm with a Better Beamer.

Thank you.

P.S. I want to shoot in either Shutter Priority at 1/1250 sec. or Aperture Priority at F8.

[arash_hazeghi]

Hi Sol,

Welcome to BPN. I moved your thread to the appropriate forum.

A flash is generally not usable for BIF as the bird distance to camera varies greatly. Usually if the bird is far the flash will have no effect even with the beemer. Furthermore, if you set your camera to aperture priority your flash/meter will try to expose for the entire scene which means the bird will be cooked or severely underexposed depending on the background. 1/1250sec is often not fast enough to get a tack sharp flight RAW. I suggest you use manual exposure set to the bird, crank up the ISO to keep the shutter speed high and not rely on flash.

Good luck

Arash

[Sol Shamilzadeh]

Hi Arash,

Just took a look at your website and am blown away with your incredibly sharp images of beautifully captured shots of birds in fight.
It looks like you were blessed with great sunlight and thus able to use fast shutter speeds.

Unfortunately, I am presented with lots of overcast, cloudy
days here in New York during the winter and am trying to figure out if the SB 910 would help me with fill using the better beamer for BIF.
I thought it would.

Another question: would you recommend a flash bracket to avoid the "steel" eye? If so, which of the many out there would work well.
Note I run around with a monopod often.

Thanks for your help.

Sol

[arash_hazeghi]

Hi Arash,

Just took a look at your website and am blown away with your incredibly sharp images of beautifully captured shots of birds in fight.
It looks like you were blessed with great sunlight and thus able to use fast shutter speeds.

Unfortunately, I am presented with lots of overcast, cloudy
days here in New York during the winter and am trying to figure out if the SB 910 would help me with fill using the better beamer for BIF.
I thought it would.

Another question: would you recommend a flash bracket to avoid the "steel" eye? If so, which of the many out there would work well.
Note I run around with a monopod often.

Thanks for your help.

Sol

Sol,

As I mentioned flash will not help you with BIF. If you are shooting flight in low light you need to use high ISO not flash.


good luck

[Dan Brown]

Hi Sol. I agree with Arash, for BIF you should shoot in manual, use a high SS, which may require a high ISO, depending on the lighting conditions. With the D800, high iso's are ok. If you would like to add fill flash to this, you could by setting your camera/strobe for high speed sync and then set you strobe at about -2 stops fill. This would give you an eye shine where there may not have been one and maybe a tiny bit of light in the shadows, but not much unless the bird is close. The higher your iso is the farther the strobe will reach. The D800 at 4fps will not get slower due to the strobe (it's already real slow!). All the above being said, I don't think it is really worth lugging the strobe around for an eye shine!

[Ulli Hoeger]

Hi Sol. I agree with Arash, for BIF you should shoot in manual, use a high SS, which may require a high ISO, depending on the lighting conditions. With the D800, high iso's are ok. If you would like to add fill flash to this, you could by setting your camera/strobe for high speed sync and then set you strobe at about -2 stops fill. .........



Hi,

I don't think there is a general answer to your question as it depends on to many different factors, but I agree with shooting BIF in M-mode and suitable fast SS.

Just another bit of info that may be obvious or not. I use the flash set to TTL mode and to underexpose by -1.5 or -2 (this is the flash output compensation dialed in on the flash itself or the camera flash compensation dial -not to be confused with the general exposure compensation used in A-,S- or P- modes) and in highspeed sync, unless you plan to work with those relatively long flash sync. shutter speeds.

Otherwise find a spot with lots of gulls, ducks, pigeons, starlings ... and play with settings to see what works for you and when.

Ulli