Night owl (help)

[Stockline19]

New to the canon forum, I have been looking around for a couple weeks but I have not really posted much.

Anyways here goes:

Went out last night and seen a dark figure swooping between the trees, so naturally I investigate. Found this guy hunting right in my busy city neighborhood, time will tell if he is a frequent customer to the block, he did some cleaning up when he was here, about 3 mice in 20 minutes.

http://www.photozo.com/album/data/9241/owls3.JPG (http://www.photozo.com/album/showphoto.php?photo=157156)


http://www.photozo.com/album/data/9241/owl4.JPG (http://www.photozo.com/album/showphoto.php?photo=157154)


http://www.photozo.com/album/data/9241/owls2.JPG (http://www.photozo.com/album/showphoto.php?photo=157155)


My question is, how do you go along shooting animals at night with only your on camera flash? I couldnt get close enough to him to make my flash real effective so I had to use a slower shutter speed and a higher iso naturally. Should I just wait to get a bigger flash before I attepmt to go out and shoot again? I found it hard to focus with only having a flashlight to see where he was and auto-focus didnt work of course.

Alot of my shots went blurry, well because he was hunting not posing, and the use of slow shutter speed. I know they are technically ugly but I thought I would share since this is the first time I have seen an owl in real life. (not counting zoo)

Also does anyone know what type this is?

any help would be appreciated

[Pete]

Personally, I can't see how you could have done a better job of this with the equipment you have. You've done a great job of these (try counting how many night time bird shots you see here - you won't find that many!!).

[Stockline19]

Thanks pete, these were all shot at f5.6 and without a shutter release, but they are still a bit soft or my liking. Its HARD focusing manually with no light on the subject.

[Pete]

I wouldn't worry at all about the fine technicalities here, the shots of him sitting on the branch with the moon behind is delightful.

Sometimes you just can't beat the laws of photography. The only way you could get better/sharper shots is to set up a remote shutter/flash arrangement and hop he goes to the right branch. But in doing that you'd lose all the natural feel that you've got here.