[derekkite]

There are lots of ways to skin a cat. Triggering mechanisms rely on a certain predictability; the creature will pass by a certain point at a given speed, all you do is adjust everything to factor in your latencies, get decent lighting, and you get your shot. Hopefully. Lots of trial and error, it is very challenging.

I could search for such a location, but this is the type of shot I would like to perfect:



The bats were hunting the mayfly hatch, they were concentrated in a relatively small area. This was with the 35mm macro, I had the three flashes closely concentrated; one on the camera and the other two within 6" or so. There are a few things wrong with the shot; the lens isn't sharp enough, the light is too concentrated. Sharp and with improved illumination, and a few milliseconds later that would have been a stunning shot.

What I did subsequently is tested the lenses that I own. The A 50 was much sharper than the 35mm copy that I own. The 90mm Tamron is also much sharper, but at the distances involved the depth of field is very narrow. I would like to set the focus box somewhere at 12-15 feet, with a depth of field 2 feet minimum up to 3 feet if possible. The flash mounting was also changed, with one on the body, the other two on either end of a 5 ft piece of angle aimed inwards to the focus point. Those two things improved the quality substantially, and that is as far as I got last summer as the weather and hatch conditions changed.

So building on that, I'd like something a bit longer than 50mm, and very sharp. The optical triggering extended the duration of the flash by about 25%, so I've set up a wired trigger harness. Wireless triggering has a latency about the same as the duration of the flash, so won't work. I have 5 flash units, and some stands to spread the light source out even more. I had an infrared trigger last year but didn't have the opportunity to test it thoroughly, and suspect that it may be of limited usefulness. The softness at the end of the wings on the first shot is movement blur; at 1/8 power the duration was about 1/4000th, and would like to get a faster exposure if possible with a mixture of more flashes and flash extenders.

I'd like to go into the mayfly hatch with lots of options. If I have to order something, it will put off the attempt another year. A lens between 50mm and 90mm very sharp.

[Nicolas06]

Because I had captures that were not sharp due to the lens, and hence were throwaways. With a 50mm lens it is cropped substantially; any softness is magnified.

I'll watch for the sigma 70mm and the 55mm.

As you explained, your capture where not so great due to movement. There also of course possible mis focussing and also high iso. Here all you shoots have very low sharpness. Digitalis try to explain it to you and I try too. You don't have a lens sharpness problem (and the DA35 macro is plainty sharp of course), you issue is your subject is fast, in low light and too small on the final picture to get descent details.

There no reason to ask for the best lens ever if the picture on it will be quite small anyway and more or less blury no matter what. When you say the 50mm is so much better than the 35mm it just look to me that using a longer focal lense you have better magnification and thus bigger subject on the frame with more pixels. So for sure any good 70mm would improve as long you ensure the bat stay in th the frame.

I don't understand neither why the tamron 90 would not fit if the 70 would be a good choice... Just put the camera a bit futher away from the subject and the problem is solved. At least you would avoid to buy expensive gear for basically one shoot that you are not even sure will look good anyway.

I mean if you are 7meters with a 70mm, just put yourself 9 meters away with a 90mm... The framing and deph of field and manification will be exactly the same.

[SyncGuy]

Erm... I believe it's either you were limited by the max sync speed or you weren't even at max sync speed to begin with?

You'll lose flash power but have you tried HSS?

[Digitalis]

You'll lose flash power but have you tried HSS?

You would lose too much power for little gain. Also motion blur artifacts would appear if you used HSS, these bats are moving pretty quickly.

In this situation a single fast flash pulse will be sufficient, there is no need to drown out ambient light which is typically where HSS is used.

[mikeSF]

I hate to say this but you don't need a sharper lens, you need to be using the correct technique.

I know of photographers who work with nocturnal animals, and the equipment they work with is very different from daylight wildlife photography. Photographing Nocturnal animals especially ones that fly is very difficult. A common technique for nighttime bat photography is to use sound triggers - bats use echolocation signals to track their prey, these ultrasonic calls they use to "see" increase in frequency and amplitude when they close in on their prey. Photographers use microphones that are sensitive to ultrasonic frequencies, they set them up so when a certain frequency and amplitude threshold is passed, the signal will trigger the camera* which in turn trigger their flash units to allow them to capture the bats while hunting.

Another technique for capturing images of nocturnal animals is to use camera traps which use laser triggering - when a bat (or anything else) breaks the laser beam it will fire the camera shutter - however this technique is difficult to use as laser beams are very narrow and it can be very difficult to place them in the path of the animals - it is hard to predict where bats will fly, they don't fly the way birds do: they tend to move erratically.

You could also use a focus trap, when you can see a bat passing through a pre-defined area where you have your lighting set up, you can trigger your camera manually - using flash units with modelling lights would be a good idea for this - moths are attracted to light and this will increase the probability of you capturing an image. Any lens can be used for catch focus work as most 50mm lenses when stopped down to f/5.6-f/8 perform identically**. Using a longer lens will reduce the chance that you will catch an image of a bat with this technique - any wide lens could be used, most wide angle lenses perform reasonably well at small apertures.

* Using multiple cameras at different angles slaved to the same triggering circuit is also common to increase the number of viable images.
** I own 181 50mm lenses, there are some 50mm lenses that don't perform well no matter how much you stop them down, there are also some 50mm lenses that are capable of exceptionally high resolution compared to their peers, but the truth remains - f/8 and be there.





The FA77 has higher peak resolution.

good info

[bassek]

I hate to say this but you don't need a sharper lens, you need to be using the correct technique.

I know of photographers who work with nocturnal animals, and the equipment they work with is very different from daylight wildlife photography. Photographing Nocturnal animals especially ones that fly is very difficult

I am amazed how you got the bat in your shot! It would be almost impossible without luck for me regardless of my lens choice.
Another option is to shoot away and see if 1 out of 100 would be decent.

Seb

[Na Horuk]

I remembered a thread about bats in flight. It is from 2012, you can find it here: https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/38-photographic-technique/188211-bats-flight.html

[derekkite]

I remembered a thread about bats in flight. It is from 2012, you can find it here: https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/38-photographic-technique/188211-bats-flight.html

Yes, I saw those. Amazingly clear. He probably used 1/16th power to freeze the movement across the frame. His flash placement is all around, it seems he has some kind of flash diffuser or modifiers to soften them up. The fur is sharp and clear. Quite the accomplishment.

The bats leave their roosts and skim the pond for a drink before going out hunting, so he would have had few opportunities every evening. I truly appreciate the magnitude of the challenge.

[johnmflores]

This sounds like a job for the DA* 50-135 F2.8, but I'd imagine that most of the lenses being discussed are quite sharp at F8 and that any softness is due to DOF. This "cube in space" will still have a plane of maximum sharpness, after all, with sharpness falling off in either direction.

This continues to be a fascinating project. Thanks for sharing and looking forward to more updates.

[emalvick]

This is quite outside my experience, and as others have stated, it is amazing that you are able to get the bats in the frame to begin with. I know if I was trying to do the same types of shots I'd end up with only 1 out of 100 containing the bat and then whatever other issues on top of it.

I'm assuming you are taking these shots where ambient light is fairly low. As a result, it seems that your flashes are what in essence set the exposure time... i.e. the flash duration means more than the actual shutter speed (it's probably obvious, but I'm in essence thinking out loud here).

If the flash duration isn't fast enough (short enough), and the lack of sharpness is actually motion blur, then one solution would be to cut the flash power an additional step over what you have already and double the ISO to compensate for the resulting lower amount of light.

If you are using multiple flashes, then another cause for apparent lack of sharpness or motion blur is that the flashes aren't firing off exactly in sync. It would seem that if any flash were slightly off, you might end up with an apparent motion blur or softness. I'm not sure if this could be a real problem or not as I'm not sure how out of sync flashes would have to be to create such a problem. It's just a thought again.

Anyway, I can't see sharpness being an issue because most of these higher quality lenses we're talking about are pretty sharp at f8 regardless of the nuances or differences between each lens. Most lens differences show up wide open (or close to it). Your bats are in the center of the frame it seems or near to it.

Otherwise, I hope you'll keep sharing your progress and photos. I like the photos you've shared in this thread. I'm sure few of us could even have half the success you have shown already.

Good luck.

[derekkite]

This is quite outside my experience, and as others have stated, it is amazing that you are able to get the bats in the frame to begin with. I know if I was trying to do the same types of shots I'd end up with only 1 out of 100 containing the bat and then whatever other issues on top of it.

I'm assuming you are taking these shots where ambient light is fairly low. As a result, it seems that your flashes are what in essence set the exposure time... i.e. the flash duration means more than the actual shutter speed (it's probably obvious, but I'm in essence thinking out loud here).

If the flash duration isn't fast enough (short enough), and the lack of sharpness is actually motion blur, then one solution would be to cut the flash power an additional step over what you have already and double the ISO to compensate for the resulting lower amount of light.

If you are using multiple flashes, then another cause for apparent lack of sharpness or motion blur is that the flashes aren't firing off exactly in sync. It would seem that if any flash were slightly off, you might end up with an apparent motion blur or softness. I'm not sure if this could be a real problem or not as I'm not sure how out of sync flashes would have to be to create such a problem. It's just a thought again.

Anyway, I can't see sharpness being an issue because most of these higher quality lenses we're talking about are pretty sharp at f8 regardless of the nuances or differences between each lens. Most lens differences show up wide open (or close to it). Your bats are in the center of the frame it seems or near to it.

Otherwise, I hope you'll keep sharing your progress and photos. I like the photos you've shared in this thread. I'm sure few of us could even have half the success you have shown already.

Good luck.

I was using optical triggering which has a latency of about .06 microseconds. The flash duration was approximately 1/4000th, or .25 microseconds (from memory). Any shot where the bat was going across the frame had obvious motion blur. The shots are substantially cropped; the wide lenses would have more of a chance of capturing something, at the cost of sharpness. As well, using a flash on a furry beast will make unpleasant hot spots and highlights. The best shots were underexposed and brought out post.

More flash units at lower power spread around the subject with hard wired triggering should eliminate most of those issues. I will also do continuous 10 second open shutter and trigger the flash units to expose. I have some flash stands as well, giving me the option of putting the flash units close and keeping the camera back to optimize depth of field. The challenge then is to get one of the beasties in the frame.

Each time I went out I adjusted some things, and the results were apparent. The quality of the shots were improving as I eliminated one problem after another. This coming summer I'm starting where I left off, and assuming that they have the same feeding patterns should be able to get decent results.

[philbaum]

If the flash duration isn't fast enough (short enough), and the lack of sharpness is actually motion blur, then one solution would be to cut the flash power an additional step over what you have already and double the ISO to compensate for the resulting lower amount of light.

If you are using multiple flashes, then another cause for apparent lack of sharpness or motion blur is that the flashes aren't firing off exactly in sync. It would seem that if any flash were slightly off, you might end up with an apparent motion blur or softness. I'm not sure if this could be a real problem or not as I'm not sure how out of sync flashes would have to be to create such a problem. It's just a thought again....

Good luck.

As has been discussed, one plans on a hypothetical shooting zone and presets camera focus to cover that area. Doing some static daylight shooting to assure adequate focusing sharpness in all areas of the zone might disclose softness where the DOF is not adequate. I would definitely do this pretesting as this is more likely the cause of softness. I assume metering is also preset, one wouldn't want to waste processing time on metering.

Smallish softboxes are fairly inexpensive. I think i paid about $40 for mine which measures 20"by 20" with a mesh covered opening. For portraits - i've even lowered the wide angle plastic lens that comes with most flashes. Again, pretesting would be useful to determine optimum settings. Using the soft box and fractional power from 1/4 to 1/16, i've gotten great manual flash shots outdoors at dusk, (single manual yongnuo flash) -no hot spots - Such as this:

[IMG][/IMG]

If i can get that kind of FOV from a single Yongnuo 560 flash in that small soft box, perhaps you don't need so many flashes. My camera was oriented about 45 deg from the flash. I think its really the lens optical coverage of the zone thats the issue. But i may be wrong :-) If you don't tie your camera(s) down to being in the same place as your flashes - you may find a better spot for you camera.

There's several high speed videos of bats flying on youtube. Perhaps there's some background information thats accessible which would tell you the kind of fliming speeds needed for these videos.

[Digitalis]

There's several high speed videos of bats flying on youtube.

I don't think that is really relevant to photogaphy - I have worked with high speed cameras before and I can tell you, Shooting at a frame rate of 1000fps requires 5.25 times more light than at 24 or 25 fps. You have to use Specialised HMI lamps with flicker reducing circuitry for continuous lighting, LEDs are still susceptible to flicker due to the circuitry that drives them - so again, you have to go for an expensive and complicated solution to deal with this.