Is a Better Beamer still used for close subjects?

I haven't posted here in a while (due to poor health), but now with the purchase of a 580 EX II flash I have a few questions!

Firstly, if you are photographing a resting bird at close distance (eg. 3 to 5 metres) should you keep the BB attached?

Secondly if you are photographing birds in flight, with High Speed Sync flash eg. 1/1000 sec or higher, at 5 to 7 metres distance, do you keep the Better Beamer attached ?

Both of these question assume that the flash is for Fill only.


Greatly looking forward to being enlightened,

Julian. :)

PS. I should have added that I'm using a 400mm 5.6 lens

Hi Julian

I would say "yes" to both ... but don't know your shutter speed for the first example. Just keep in mind if you are in High Speed Sync at twice your sync speed the light output is half .... at 1/1000 as noted above it is only one fourth !! Check the reach and you might have to set it to 1 to 1 just to get light on the bird !!

... btw can use with any lens over 300 just set the flash head at 50 !!

Hello Alfred,

Thank you for that.

Yes, with the first example I was trying to keep it simple, but I'm sure if there was enough ambient light for a shutter speed over 1/250 sec I would probably take the opportunity to use it (to increase the number of keepers).

Yesterday I read the High Speed Sync flash thread in the Educational Resources section so I learnt that at shutter speeds over 1/250 sec the flash output remains constant (for a given Output Setting) so an expsoure of 1/500 sec receives half as much fill light as a 1/250 sec one, etc.

So for birds in flight, at eg. 1/1000 sec, is it a case of varying the Manual Flash Output until you get the illumination you desire?

Edit. Having just referred to the above mentioned tutorial I read that Arthur says he automatically sets the flash output to 1:1 for high speed sync flight flash.

Note- if you use the beamer with the flash in ETTL at close distance and high ISO the flash will most likely overexpose the subject. The flash algorithm was not designed to handle the higher guide number at close range.

Chas

Thank you Charles, I'll keep that in mind.