Why I Don’t Use Flash on Birds and Owls (and why we used to)
I’m occasionally asked why I don’t use flash for birds—especially owls. My answer is pretty practical: with modern cameras, I don’t need it, and it’s one more factor that can influence a bird’s behaviour.
That wasn’t always true.
A quick bit of history: film days, slow light, and the “Better Beamer”
In the film era, low light was a wall. Film was slow, usable shutter speeds were hard to come by, and you didn’t have today’s clean high-ISO files or low-light autofocus.
Flash became a solution—sometimes for exposure, and sometimes for aesthetics. A small catchlight can make a bird feel “alive” in the frame; without it, subjects photographed in flat light can look oddly lifeless.
That’s where the Fresnel flash extender came in: a simple lens that concentrates the flash beam so more of the light lands on the bird instead of being wasted across the whole scene. One of the best-known versions is the Better Beamer, which uses a Fresnel lens to narrow and concentrate the flash output.
And the Better Beamer has a name attached to it that matters to me personally.
Walt Anderson (RIP) and real innovation
My friend Walt Anderson (RIP) was the inventor/creator of the Visual Echoes Flash Extender—widely known as the Better Beamer.
He began exploring the then-new TTL flash systems in the early 1990s and founded Visual Echoes to produce and market the product.
It was a smart, practical innovation for the realities of that time. It helped many bird photographers produce better images when the tools simply weren’t what they are today.
What changed: modern cameras changed the need
Fast forward to now: modern sensors can handle ISO levels we wouldn’t have dreamed of in the film days, and autofocus can lock onto a subject in very low light. For most bird photography situations, I can make the image with ambient light and good technique—without introducing artificial light into the encounter.
So for me, flash has shifted from “useful tool” to “unnecessary tool” for bird photography.
Owls in particular
Most Owls are highly adapted to low-light environments. Their hunting and movement patterns are built around darkness and subtle contrast. Even if long-term effects of flash are debated in different contexts, the short-term reality in the field is that some birds react—blinking, flinching, shifting posture, or leaving a perch. If I can avoid introducing that variable, I will.
What the research says (a simple, measurable point)
There’s also a research-backed reason to be cautious with anything that increases disturbance.
A 2019 study in Biological Conservation looked at bird photography and quantified escape responses (flight-initiation distance). One of the headline findings: for most species, photographers triggered escape at greater distances than walkers, suggesting that photography can be a stronger disturbance stimulus than a normal passerby.
That doesn’t “prove” flash is always harmful—but it does reinforce a basic idea: our choices and behaviours around birds matter, and it’s worth minimizing anything that can add pressure.
The ethical baseline I follow
I try to keep my approach simple and consistent with widely shared best practices. NANPA’s Principles of Ethical Field Practices puts it plainly:
“If an animal shows stress, move back and use a longer lens.”
That line is easy to apply, and it works.
Where I land
I’m not interested in turning this into a debate. I’m interested in stacking the odds in favour of the bird.
So I work with available light, modern sensor performance, and field craft. And when the light isn’t there, I’d rather miss a frame than add a variable that I don’t need.
References
Short-eared Owl — Winter Flight with Lone Tree by Julie Morrison (Asio flammeus, Hibou des marais, Búho campestre, SEOW) January 8, 2025, during week 1/8 of the Snowy Owl Workshops in Ontario, Canada. Sony a9 Mark III mirrorless camera body & Sony SEL FE 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 G OSS Lens @600mm. ISO 5,000, f/6.3 @ 1/5,000s Manual exposure.
That same afternoon—the very one that gave me the image at the top of this post—also produced a milestone I’m genuinely proud of: my wife, Julie Morrison, made an image that’s now being published here on the blog for the first time. If you’ve spent any time with us in the field, you already know she’s a gifted photographer with a calm, confident eye and a knack for timing. But what really makes my wife a force to be reckoned with on workshops is her owl-spotting superpower: she’ll pick up a shape, a posture, a blink of movement in the grass that most people would drive right past. I love watching her work, and I’m thrilled to share her first blog-published image—made on the same afternoon as mine.