jackalphotography: End of May Blog.

I want to start first of all by giving my opinion on speedlite vs continuous

mainly because i purchased some cheap continuous lights £50 got me two 135watt lights,light stands,shoot through umbrellas.

I got them thinking they would be better for pet portraits,i just didn't want to use flash on animals mainly.

So this as you can see is the kind i bought and my speedlite below it.

The examples below without going into too much detail on settings and such,are taken with one light in the same position,same room with the same ambient light.

First off the speedlite shot manual mode shutter speed altered to darken the backgraound,

I liked the speedlite,the photo has more depth to it.This is my first time using a speedlite so if it looks amateurish my apologies.

The continuous light shot just seemed flat i couldn't really do anything with it,i may as well have been using window ligth.They really didn't throw that much light out,so if i were to do any pet portraits in the future i would probably take it outside or use window light.

Now a few shots i've taken in May.

First up was the Yorkshire Wildlife Park.

Amur Leopard

Painted Hunting Dog

Amur Tiger

More picture from this day out can be seen Here

Next i went to Twycross Zoo

Lopori the baby Bononbo

Red Faced Black Spider Monkey

Lowes Guenon

Ringtail Lemur

More pics from this day out here

Next up flying Black Headed Gulls at RSPB Old Moor.

The day was a grey overcast day and this is how i set my camera up to get the flying shots.

First i put the camera in Manual, ISO 400,drive mode AI Servo and Continuous Shooting,Focus Point i have selected on the Canon 7D is called AF point expansion but on a lower end camera unless your really good at tracking flying birds i would select all focus points.

Widest aperture you have,mine was f5.6 at 400mm.

Shutter speed i set at 1/800 then i take at test shot then either speed up the shutter or slow it down but i would never go below 1/640 at 400mm i'm not that good so i would move the ISO up and down on brighter and darker days but i would be looking for a shutter speed of around 1/1000.