"Roger (K8RI)" wrote in message
...
With the digital cameras I've used over the past few years I had a
problem with my cat's eyes always being closed when I used flash. Of
course all of these cameras had the built in flash which was more than
adequate for most shooting. One handy aspect of these is the built in
sensing. When I look at the flash I see a single flash, but the cat
sees two and that is enough for the cat to close his eyes before the
flash goes off to take the photo.

I have one of the old Vivitar power house 285 flash guns and decided
to give it a try on the hot shoe. With this one you do have to
manually set the shutter and aperture but it'll give a good exposure
the length of a basketball court.

Set on reduced power using the settings given for the distance brings
sharp images and no closed eyes with the cats. OTOH you will get a
blink from the focus light if the camera uses one.


You should rarely need a flash to take good pictures of cats. You just risk
"green eye" and more importantly that the cat will learn to look away when
he/she sees the camera. They really don't like flash. I don't want them to
learn to not like the camera. Right now they are just curious enough about
it to look always directly into the lens.

Cats will hold very still and stare into the lens so even fairly long
exposures (like 1/8sec) on a tripod turn out well. Of course some will not
turn out. Cats stay still for pictures much better than children do, and
without a flash, you don't get the shadow.

After (or before) taking the picture, drop your 18% grey card near where the
cat was sitting and take one more picture. You can use this to correct the
colour cast from your interior lights since you didn't use a flash to
overpower the room lights.