First Blog Post: Three years of Practice, What Now?

[bob williams]

Yep, even though I haven't seen bird one yet, my feeders are getting filled this weekend; its supposed to be a perfect 74-78 degrees, sunny and no wind this weekend.

Since I only have the one flash I expect I'll need to play with its location to balance bird / background

Some suggestions for one light work:

1. Place feeder in shady location
2. If your planned natural background isn't in the shade, use a nice colored posterboard or something flat with a pleasing color pattern (check the cloth stores)---Flat is much easier to light
3. Set your flash so that it hits bird and background (camera mount works fine), but the closer you can move the flash, the more flexibility you have with exposure settings
4. Start with these settings: Manual everything, including manual focus. Set flash at manual 1/8, F16, ISO 100, 1/250 ---pre-focus at the center of the feeder spout, take a shot of your feeder in front of the background and see how it looks and adjust from there---make sure you keep your shutter at or below sync speeds and don't drop below f11, otherwise it will be hard to get a bird in focus.

Exposure rules that I like, if you start at the above settings:

If pic is too dark, increase aperature, but not below f11
If pic is too light decrease flash duration to 1/16 or more

If available, use a cable release, that way you can relax until the birds start flying.


Remember, even with one light, a great Hummingbird shot with frozen or near frozen wings is possible if you shoot enough---The wings stop between thier up and down strokes---and this is where you are most likely to get a great shot. Since it is impossible to time these, you just have to shoot until you catch one. I usually shoot a thousand frames before I get one that I will post on TDP or put on my website.

Good luck Dave, I hope you enjoy this as much as I do.

One more thing Dave, That 135L you have should make a great lens for this, just don't be afraid to ove the camera/lens to MFD and keep your background within 2 or 3 feet of where you think the bird will be.