First spider pictures and now bats, what is this site becoming?
Zeke and I were out for a walk the other evening and on the way back I noticed five bats flying back and forth along a tree bordered stretch of road. Since it was still twilight I could watch them fly overhead without any problem and since it was a narrow corridor it was much easier to keep track of a single bat.
Which, of course, means you could follow them with a camera.
I ran back to the house, hooked up the flash and the fastest lens I have and ran back to the bat show. Standing in the middle of the road I'd track the bat and fire off a shot as it flew overhead. It was pretty dark so auto-focus was out of the question. Instead I turned auto-focus off and manually focused on something about the same distance as the overflying bats to lock in the distance.
It was a lot of fun. The bats didn't seem to mind the flash. Each time the flash fired I could see the clouds of insects they were thinning. The round blob you see in the photos is an insect about to become a snack.
If you want to attempt this with a camera that doesn't have manual focus, try the following:
Those are amazing pictures. Thanks for the photo taking advice.
Nice. Especially the top one, which is very well focused given the circumstances. The flash gives a very ghostly effect as it highlight its skeleton (almost an X-ray!).