looking for the perfect shutter for bird photography

[gyuri]

Dear all,

 

one of my friend is looking for the best solution to his bird

photography. He works with IR beam traps, and remote controllers,

flashes, and EOS RS/RT bodies. It could be a central shutter for

example, what is built in, or applicable to a large format lens.

 

He is searching a shutter with the next parameters:

 

- shutter time lag under 6ms

- full flash synchronization

- electronically controlled, and released

- exposure time is shorter than (or equal to) 1/500 sec

 

I just read the Uniblitz website for this solution. The Uniblitz

seems pretty good shutters, but fot the correct aperture we have to

use a 14mm, or a 25mm modell. Here the shortest expo time is 4-6

milliseconds (1/250-1/166 sec). (www.uniblitz.com)

 

So, my question is:

Is there any applicable shutter on the market? Or any 100-200mm lens

with this shutter? If the bayonet, or the lens is not fit, not a

problem, we are ready to work on it :-)

Any other idea?

 

Many thanks in advance, for any answer!

 

Gyuri

[alan_woolnough]

Gyuri,

 

It would be interesting to know exactly what your friends project consists of, as it sounds very specialised.

 

As you mention infra red beams etc, and birds, i assume he or she is attempting to photograph small/fast flying birds such as swifts/swallows/martins etc.

 

Ive never tried this myself but ive read many articles over the years on this type of thing, and usually shutter speed is irrelevent as this is often done by using slow film, a short lens stopped right down, and multiple flash guns set to 1/16 power resulting in an extremely short burst of light to freeze the bird {a lot quicker than 1/500}. Some method of controling the flight path over a precise area, such as a small boggy area of ground beside a wall which attracts flying insects etc, and a lot of experimenting and wasted film determining the exact distance to place the beams {depending on the birds flight speed etc}.

 

Im sure there is a lot more to it, and most likely i have jumped to the wrong conclusion about your friends project.

 

Hope you can get some useful advice regarding the shutters

 

All the best

[edward_caliguri1]

Hi!

For flash I suggest the Ellinchrome "freestyle" - an outdoor - all -

weather rechargeable unit, with durations as little as 1/3600th I

understand. It's a great ubit - a friend of mine has used it to

shoot Owls exiting and going back to nests. Beam triggered of

course.

A 6x9 view camera with a roll back would be great for this, but the

only electronic shutters I can think of are in Mamiya cameras or

Rollei 8000 series (there you have a 1000 second synch on

some lenses I think). But I can vouch for the flash set-up and the

View camera - I've seen it work! Hope this helps.

[gyuri]

Dear Alan,

 

You are right! My friend takes photos about hummingbirds, kingfishers, and swallows, mainly small, and fast flying birds. The kingfisher is a bit more complicated to taking photos about it than a hummingbird ;-)

 

Here is an example from his collection:

 

http://www.greenfo.hu/pix/dinamikus/galeria/4.jpeg

 

As You can see here, the background is black here.

 

Edward,

 

we are investigating the time lag of the Rolleis, but until now, I did not found any exact information for this. Thanks for the flash info!

[alan_woolnough]

Gyuri,

 

That is an excellent image of a tricky subject and I admire you and your friends dedication, as this type of photography requires a lot of planning and knowledge of the subject.

 

I dont feel qualified to offer any advice, although i own a book on european kingfishers written by David Boag, who did this type of thing a few years back, and he went through the same problems with black backgrounds. He experimented with multiple flash units to light the background, or simply coaxing the bird to dive closer to the background so some of the flash exposed this area as well.

 

Im sure you will solve your problem sooner or later, and i look forward to seeing the results.

 

Best of luck

[gyuri]

Alan,

thank You for the information. My friend probably know this photographer very well (maybe personally) but as I followed the name, and found the most complete bird photography link collection here:

http://www.fatbirder.com/links/images_and_sound/photos.html

[gyuri]

Here is an example:

http://forum.fotoklikk.hu/modules.php?set_albumName=album04&id=abo&op=modload&name=gallery&file=index&include=view_photo.php

 

EOS 1nRS 1/250, f8, background in natural daylight.

The bird is about 1m, main light is 8x 540EZ, 100/2,8 lens

 

The main goal, to freeze the motion, and the wings (without secondary expo on the wings), get correct natural looking background. All of this without building an outdoor studio with 1000 studio flashes, controllers, wires, reflectors what cause the damage/disturb of the nature. All of this old techniques needs energy, what is not so environment friendly :-(

For the infra system, my friend is using an self developed, and made wireless system.

[alan_woolnough]

Another excellent image,

 

Its great to hear that your friend is approaching this subject with the natural enviroment, and birds welfare being a high priority.

 

It would be ideal if there was an extremely fast film, with the same qualities of a slow film, to help remove the black background problems with flash fall off.

 

Here in the UK at this moment, to get a motion stopping shutter speed for a diving kingfisher {probably 1/4000 sec} at F11 using natural light, would require a film speed of about 6400asa in sunlight and 25600asa in our often dreary weather.

 

Maybe the digital revolution will eventualy solve the problem, but until then i guess that ingenuity and a lot of hard work/trial & error is the only option for this type of thing.

 

keep up the good work