Amateur photographers usually only rely on their flash units when their subject is otherwise too dark to be photographed. A more experienced photographer understands that a flash can be used in a variety of circumstances to enhance a photo, even when sufficient ambient light is available.
In bird photography, a Canon 430EX flash can be used as a fill flash to help compensate for an overly bright background or shadows on the bird or to add more light to a frame, which enables a photographer to use a faster shutter speed and freeze a fast-moving bird.
Instructions
1. Meter your ambient light. Most bird photography occurs outdoors during the day when there is plenty of ambient light available. However, the amount of ambient light varies depending on the time of day, the season, the weather and your particular location.
2. Consider the location of your bird. Birds on the ground or in the air have fewer things around them that could cause shadows, and you will not need a strong setting on your 430EX to compensate. Birds in trees, however, are likely sitting in the shadow of the tree, and you will need more fill flash to effectively capture them.
3. Choose either the "Automatic" or "Manual" mode on the backside of your Canon 430EX flash. In automatic mode, the flash can be configured to add only fill flash, but it may overexpose or underexpose your subject if your camera's metering looks at the wrong area of your frame. Manual mode will give you more control, but you will also need to continuously reconfigure your camera as you move between sun and shade.
4. Set your flash to 1 1/3 to tell it to underexpose by 1 1/3 stop of light. This will typically be sufficient for outdoor fill flash, but you may have to adjust up or down between 1/3 and 2/3 stops to find a good balance. Photographing a bird that is more distant will require a more powerful setting. Your Canon 430EX will automatically use the information provided to it by your camera to determine your subject's distance and adjust its power accordingly.
5. Position your flash head directly toward the bird. While bouncing flash or using diffuser heads might be ideal for portraiture, fill flash on distant objects requires unobstructed light.
Tags: fill flash, ambient light, your camera, 430EX flash, ambient light available