Capturing Hummers

[Alan]

Nice shot Alan. I personally dont have the patience or arms to hold the camera for that long. Sometimes it may take me two or three hours just to get a few shots. So great job taking these handheld.


I am curious about your background. Is it just open space, or did you use something?


Bob
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Thanks, Bob. My arms can also get tired. []


That background is the side of my house, which is at least 20 feet away. It's far enough away that at f/5.6, it's blurred completely.

[Bill W]

Finally got thru the first round (culling and PP a few) of my air show photos (really tired of looking at planes), so I went out this morning to shoot some HBs.


Boy, has the sun moved in just a week....fall is moving in quickly...to my benefit actually. I have much softer light on one of the feeders, but of course they didn't cooperate.


But I did catch my first juvie male RTHB of the season; 7D, 100-400 at 400mm, f6.3, ISO 400, 1/640





Just a thought for this thread; what would you think about IDing your HBs when you post them?


I know I have it pretty easy, living east of the Mississippi and having pretty much just the Ruby throated HB....thoughts?


Bob....headed your way next week and looking forward to some Calliopes and Anna's.


Great sites and links folks...thanks for sharing.


Bill

[bob williams]

Finally had a chance to work with my new (2nd) flash unit and Pocket Wizards------Sure beats the shoplight I was using before.


























Still having some ghosting problems, But I think I know the solution and will work on it sometime this week.


These were shot with the background flash at 1/2 power, the bird flash at 1/64 or 1/32, ISO 400 and exposure around f11@250


Hope you like,


Bob

[bob williams]

Testing

[Joel Eade]

Bob,


You're making better and better images but I would like to see them not cropped quite so tightly.


I'm sure you already know but, to get rid of ghosting you have to allow less ambient light into the exposure so tighten the f stop or reduce the iso....either one will work. When you do that you may find you will need another flash unit to provide enough light.


Joel

[bob williams]

Bob,


You're making better and better images but I would like to see them not cropped quite so tightly.


I'm sure you already know but, to get rid of ghosting you have to allow less ambient light into the exposure so tighten the f stop or reduce the iso....either one will work. When you do that you may find you will need another flash unit to provide enough light.


Joel
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Joel, Once again, you are correct. I did find out that I really don't have enough light yet to accomplish what I am trying to do. I think I will try and just work on the bird next time and not worry about the background. I do have a concern: I will be shooting with a 580 EXII and a cheap vivitar flash. I would like to shoot the bird with both flashes at about about 1/64th-1/128 flash power which the Canon Flash can do, but the Vivitar is only capable of 1/16 power. I think this will create ghosting. The only solution I can think of is to move the vivitar farther away from the subject effectively reducing the amount of light on the subject. Anyway, I'll play with it to see I can figure out. Any suggestions are appreciated.


As far as the crop, It is usually only done for compositional purposes or to get rid of the feeder. But I will adjust so I won't have to crop as much.


Thanks for the coaching and tips, they have been valuable and appreciated.


Bob

[Joel Eade]

Bob,


Some of the vivitar flashes have an accessory that can mount on the front called Vari-power....it replaces the thyristor adjuster....it can let you dial the power down more. You might find one on ebay.


Moving the flash back probably won't work because the flash duration will be the same, what you need is more light at a shorter pulse duration (ie multiple flashes)


You could get one or two more Vivitar flashes with varipower and you'll be set. I have four total but often just set up 3 ( one on camera and 2 off camera on light stands).


I haven't done this yet but I would like to make some large printsof out of focus flowers or trees and mount them on cardboard to use as a background, that way you can easily move/adjust the background as needed.


There's always one more step in the process and more gear needed....oh well !!!


Keep going, your shots are improving quickly


Joel

[Sheiky]

Finally had a chance to work with my new (2nd) flash unit and Pocket Wizards------Sure beats the shoplight I was using before.

Nice work Bob [Y] That feeder, doesn't it have a real flower the birds put their beak? in?


Anyway...you're improving very rapidly! [Y]

[bob williams]

Nice work Bob [img]/emoticons/emotion-21.gif[/img] That feeder, doesn't it have a real flower the birds put their beak? in?

Thanks Jan. The feeder doesn't have a flower, just a little hole. I have tried to stick flowers in the feeder, but have only been able to get the birds to hit it once. I have even seen the birds pull the flower out of the feeder, which was pretty funny but didn't help my composition efforts.


Bob

[bob williams]

Ok, Here is one from the weekend. I started out trying to use flash only (No Ambient Light) and to focus on the bird only and not worry about the background.It didn't take me long to realize that two flashes, outside, just isn't enough light to do this, especially when one is mounted to the camera 6 or 7 feet away. doing this with my current equipment just simply let in too much ambient light. So I switched gears, Set my flashes on 1/16, Iso 200 or 400, Shutter set at250 @ F11 or F9---here are the results. Wish I had more, but the birds were scarce this weekend.