Nocturnal animals: backlighting, 100% flash. How-to request.

Does anyone know of a discussion regarding backlighting techniques for photographing animals in the

field, at night, using 100% flash light.

I have one flash on the hotshoe, one to the side and since there's no background to illuminate I was

thinking of backlighting the raccoon/opossum.

I realise this is a considerable amount of light I'm putting on the animal, although I'm shooting wide open

at f/4 and two of the flashes are only at ~1/8th power each (~ 6feet away from subject).

Does anyone have experience doing this? Should the backlighting flash be as diametrically opposite to

the camera as possible? Should I set this flash to ~full power for best results? I'm using film, but I might

take a digfital P+S to try and model the scene.

Yours,

TS Libertan.

You might check out this web site of a teacher and friend , Willis Peterson. Look at the photos of Nocturnal animals, he is a master at photographing these.

http://www.willispeterson.com/news.html

You will need something like a MicroSync or a Pocket Wizard. These are small radio devices. One goes on your camera's hotshoe, the other goes on your flash. You can then position the flash behind the animal or where ever. The MicroSync has a range of 100 ft. and the Pocket Wizard is 1,500 ft. as I recall. You need both a transmitter and a receiver.

Kent in SD

There is nothing quite like scaring the c**p of out of unsuspecting animal in the dark and recording the supremely startled results for posterity is there, hmmm ...

Pointed ribbing aside and further to the replies above: have you considered using infrared film/infrared-capable digital camera for these shoots? Something that works extremely well is to correspondingly place an 89B filter over your flash/hot lights -- the result would be inperceptible to the animal (apart from those that see further into the red spectrum), particularly if the filter is masked to avoid white light bleed-off at the edges. I have done this in the past for similar shoots, and it has the advantages of enabling the capture of natural behavior, and leaves the animal(s) untraumatized. An added bonus is that one isn't left with lingering spots before one's own eyes :-)

Thanks for responding.

1) Willis Peterson; indeed good night photos. I'll download his articles and read them.

2) I received three Pocketwizrd Plus II units today. Amazing to be able to fire a camera

and three flashes just by pressing the button on my sekonic light meter. Finally, I can get

rid of the Canon cords I laboured for months trying to buy cheaply. To Hell with TTL.

3) Don't get me started on IR devices. I have made IR LED arrays for use with my

camcorder. I even bought some old radio-controlled gear, modified a servo so it acted as

a continuous geared motor, and made a radio controlled platform for the camcorder. Of

course I used another servo to press the 'record on/off' button. However, it's clear that I'm

going to need to get a comcorder without an IR blocking filter, or remove said filter.

I experimented the other night, using a digital P+S to survey the scene (on bulb) as I

messed around with my (filmless) 35mm arrangement. I found that setting the backlight

flash to 4x the power of the main frontal, equidistant flash produced a nice backlit effect

(on a toy raccoon).

Incidentally, the hides/binds etc. from wildlifewatchingsupplies.com(?) are excellent. I've

had an opossum walk up to me, to within a yard, as I sat covered in a bag-hide. Their

dome-hide is outstanding.

Cheerio.

TSL.

Success. The raccoon didn't mind the flashes (two 540EZ at 1/64 and 1/16 power at

6-10feet) at all. Was more bothered by my secreted presence and the red glow from my

nightvision monocular.

Obviously the flashing LEDs on the pocket wizards are a nuisance. Just received some nice

waterproof camoflage fabric, bought on ebay. This should make good waterproof camo

covers for the flash/PW/battery packs etc.