Flash and lighting with animals

Right, I haven't tried this yet and I want to make sure I don't do any damage to what I shoot.

I'm shooting north american white pelicans.

It's starting to get darker, faster, sooner (not stronger though, we don't need kayne west in this thread:mad2: haha) and I'm considering bringing flash and lights down to the rocks with me when I go to shoot the pelicans. The distance between me and them is less than 20 feet, and a friend reported that when he used his flash on the e-410 at full it startled and scared them quite a bit.

I want to know if the on-board flash on the d40x would be too strong, if at all, to do any damage or harass them and what the general rules of using lights and flash in wildlife photography are.

I can probably branch from common sense that to use full flash would be a bad idea, but what I was planning was using gel-lights and working with a low-powered flash unit and a mirror reflector to less the harshness from the light, lest it bug them.

Good idea? Bad idea? Will it hurt the wildlife? I reallllly don't want to get ticketed for damaging the eyesight of endangered birds :D

That's a good question. And very ethical of you to bring it up before trying it.

I don't know the answer. I assume that the strobe blast is of such short duration that it would not cause permanent damage. Startle yes. But then again, just about every creature out there has better senses than we do so I'm not sure.


Perhaps others who use strobes can provide a definitive answer.

The sun is a heck of a lot brighter than a camera flash. It won't do any damage to a diurnal animal or a bird. It will probably startle them.

Flash shooting is a regular occurrence for birds here in SW Florida. I've photographed many North American White Pelicans with one, and they never seemed to care. The on camera flashes typically don't perform very well for avian photography. I recommend a hot shoe mounted unit with a Better Beamer to reach it out a bit more.

Your question reminded me of this thread.

http://forums.photographyreview.com/...ad.php?t=42989