Tu-whit to-wooo

I heard there was a display of falconry at a nearby garden centre last weekend. It’s something that I’ve always had a passing interest in, so I headed on down with my new D90 and an orbis™ in the car. Unfortunately the birds weren’t flying, but after having a nice chat with the chap running the show, I asked if he’d mind if I photographed his bird, a majestic Eurasian Eagle Owl. I was surprised to discover that they don’t mind flash photography, so I grabbed my orbis™ from the car and voilà!

He’ll be appearing on the gallery page shortly, too. To get this, I set my camera… on manual at 1/250th of a second at ISO200 to make the background a little bit darker than the owl, f6.3 for a fair depth of field, and left the flash settings on TTL, using the D90′s CLS pop-up flash to fire the SB800 in the orbis™. When shooting with my orbis™ I often set my camera on manual at 1/250 and f5.6 as a start. That way, the subject you’re lighting with your orbis™ really pops out from the underexposed background. Shooting with the camera on P or Auto, you won’t get the same slightly underexposed background. Look out for more tips in future blogposts and videos.