Help using flash

[geordie1970]

Hi Iam again having trouble with white-eye I bought a flash gun with a diffuser attached but my pics are still getting blown out except for a couple which came out blue. I have never used a flash gun before so I set it on ttl fill in with red eye reduction which fired a couple of early flashes but never gave enough time for the eyes to settle back down and as I know very little about photoshop and finding the time to learn is difficult at the moment coupled with being a bit thick doesn't help either.

[nightshade]

Knowing what kit you are using would help ,is the flash an "own brand "
Canon, Nikon, etc.

[geordie1970]

Thanks for the reply nightshade, I was using a nikon d80 with a metz 54 mz 4i

[Interpreter]

I understand that with most flash units the Red Eye Reduction consists of a pre-flash to condition the eyes before the actual flash is discharged. This should close the iris and stop light from being reflected from the back of the eye. If this stops red-eye, I would have thought that it should also stop white-eye.

Why are you using the flash as fill in? Does the pre-flash occur in this mode? If not use the flash at full power and see if this makes any difference.

[geordie1970]

My apologies I was using the flash in full mode

[richardkm]

Try moving the flash a bit further away from the camera. This should reduce the reflections from the eyes quite significantly. Was there a lot of water vapour in the air at the time of the photo? This would explain the whitish appearence in the rest of the pic.

[Words]

Eye-shine is always a problem and will be very difficult to eliminate unless you are fairly close to the subject. The closer you are, the less likely it is to occur. Not always easy with wildlife at night. Other tricks (and this may be different with different animals, is to angle the flash up or down slightly. I find with foxes it's much less likely to occur if pointing slightly down (but I'm generally fairly close anyway).

I would avoid using the red eye reduction if possible. The initial flash may disturb the subject and probably won't make too much difference to animals with good night vision.

With wood mice I tend to shoot from a couple of feet away, at ISO 100 or 200, shutter 1/160-1/200, and aperture of about 9.0 and use a hefty few steps down on the flash exposure compensation. Seems to work. For foxes, I up the ISO (I'm further away), use less flash compensation reduction (maybe -2/3rds), and an aperture of around 7.1.

It's really a matter of testing out the equipment and seeing what works. But getting in close is the real answer! And having something as wonderful as a pine marten to photograph is one heck of an incentive!

[geordie1970]

Thanks for the replies I am going to have a few practice sessions with the dog me thinks unless I can find any hedgehogs in the garden