Well, Its almost that time of year again so I thought I would revive this thread. Since I don't have any new H-Bird pics yet I thought I would ask a couple of questions and fill you in on recent preparations I have been making in anticipation of the arrival of my favorite subjects.

First, after a dissapointing year (last year) primarly due to problems with ghosting, I decided I needed two things to overcome these problems; More flash power and a means to isolate my birds and backgrounds from as much ambient light as possible. With this in mind, I decided to give up on the Vivatar flashes since they will only go down to 1/16 power. Don't get me wrong---these are great flashes and have served me well, but I just wanted the option of faster flash durations, so I purchased another 430 EXII and hopefully one more before the birds arrive. This will increase my flash inventory to 4 430's and 1 580 all capable of 1/64 flash power or 1/30,000 flash duration which should get me where I want. My intent is to use two 430's on the background and the other 3 on the bird at no more than a 3 foot range---the birds seem to be fairly tolerant of this type of set up. With all of this in mind, I spent this weekend building my "hummingbird studio" . The intent is to isolate most of the ambient outdoor light from the background while still retaining versatility in the types of backgrounds I can use---I'll try to post photo's and explanations of this "engineering masterpiece" sometime this weekend.

Second, Zenfolio now offers a blog service for thier members and I thought I would give it a try but I have never operated or even participated in a blog before. So here are my questions:

1. Would an open discussion on the trials and tribulations of H-bird photograpahy be a good subject?
and....
2. Would any of you be interested in participating in a blog like this?

Just curious, please let me know what you honestly think?


Bob