Recently I was in a remote village near jungles where my in-laws live. Having visited this place a few times now I found a small hillock where a few bats (looks like Indian Fox bat) fly over it every day after sunset. It appears these bats leave their roosting place about 20-30 minutes after sunset and take the same flying path everyday. During this visit I climbed this small hillock for a few days after sunset hoping to make some images of them bats at night.
Photographing them after sunset is a nice challenge. The visualization I had in mind was gently lit bat using a flash while rest of sky rendered a deep blue conveying mood of the night. Unfortunately I was not very successful in making a technically perfect image due to several challenges.
The biggest challenge was time window I had. For auto focus to work we need contrast difference between flying bat and the background sky (there are other techniques possible like remote triggered devices etc which was not possible in this case). I just had about 10 minutes each day when lens can auto focus and sky is sufficiently dark. Sun was setting around 6:15pm. These bats use to start flying around 6:35pm and would all cross the small hillock where I used to stand by 7pm. I was keen on making images as late as possible so that I could record mood of night with deep blue sky. I was less interested interested in images like this below – main focus was to capture the mood of the night with bats in the frame.
The other related challenge was not enough light. My 50mm f1.8 was not good enough ! Flash light would not reach. I used my SB-800 to light them with exposure compensated by +3 stops. I also tried Better Beamer flash extender – not much of help either. The first image above image is made using a 50mm f1.8 lens wide open. At f1.8 and 400iso shutter speed typically use to drop below 1/60s at around 6:45pm and decay of light seemed exponential with time later. After around 7pm no contrast, no auto focus and it was time to pack up and return home. Accurate panning at forced slower shutter speeds was another issue.
Though I was not successful in making a technically perfect image I had enormous learning in terms of realizing the challenges involved in making images at night. Hopefully I will be able to use some of it at in the near future..
