When photographing wildlife and birds at night, on-camera flash is usually unavoidable. It is the least attractive type of artificial light because it’s so flat, dimensionless, and often garish. It’s our only choice, though, in so many situations so we have to live with it. I photographed these great horned owlets in Southern California many years ago, and I always saw the humor in the blink of that one eye. I used my main film camera at the time – a Mamiya RZ 67 – along with a 350mm lens. My choice of film for wildlife was Fujichrome 100 transparency film because it was a whole f/stop faster than Fujichrome 50. By today’s standards, these speeds are pathetic! Because the ISO ratings of film were so low, the flash had to be powerful enough to provide sufficient light given the flash/subject distance and the lens aperture. The flash unit I had at that time was a Metz Mecablitz 60 CT-4 with a battery pack was as large and heavy as a brick . . . literally. I was able to take approximately one shot every four or five seconds with this setup. I would have used f/16 for the exposure, and the leaf shutter of the camera could sync with the flash at any speed. I typically used 1/250.
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