Coal tit...

It's been a cold and miserable day, and although I did go out this morning for a couple of hours it's been mostly indoor games.

Margaret has managed to catch a nasty cold so no trip to Fulbourn for us today.

I decided to pass the afternoon setting up and testing a Speedlite to try and get some better photos of the birds in the poor light.  Patience is the trick here... I mounted the speedlite on a stand 10 feet from the perch and at 45 deg to the camera line. After much trial and error the speedlite was set to Manual fully zoomed at 1/16 power. The lens is a 600mm and the camera settings were ISO 400, f5.6 at 1/200.

The Speedlite with radio trigger was outside the house and I shot through the kitchen window.

The extras are a Blue tit and Goldfinch with very slight change of settings f5.0 at 1/250 sec.

The birds completely ignore the flash...