[URL]http://www.pbase.com/bret/image/46864136/original[/URL] Business is about to pick up!
Very nice shots! Re: YUMMY. Even though you used flash on all of your pictures, it was not enough to stop the wing motion, especially on YUMMY. Was the ambient light just so strong that it overrode the freezing capability of the flash? Or was the distance so great that the contribution from the flash was negligible?
I dunno, maybe the 1/100s speed was the culprit? Ya think? I have trouble freezing my kids well at 1/100. The most you could hope for is a slow synch freeze with that speed and the movement of a hummingbird wing. Thats 60-80 full beats every second. Thats full up and down mind you. For a test, try going out and taking a picture of a car on the highway moving about 75mph and see if you freeze it. Full dark maybe, but in daylight or even dusk? I dunno. But at f/5.6 and 400mm, you can only ratchet up the exposure so much to compensate for movement. Short of popping a spotlight out of his arse, this guy did pretty dang good. If he did this without a tripod, all the more (which I doubt but with VR/IS lenses is possible I guess).
Very nice shots! Re: YUMMY. Even though you used flash on all of your pictures, it was not enough to stop the wing motion, especially on YUMMY. Was the ambient light just so strong that it overrode the freezing capability of the flash? Or was the distance so great that the contribution from the flash was negligible? =================== The distance wasn't a problem ... probably 20 feet or less. There was very little ambient light to speak of. It's always pretty dark on my back porch, especially at dusk. You'll have a hard time freezing the wings of a hummingbird with any flash. I can get close at 1/8000, but the background will be jet black even in broad daylight.
Since the Guide Number of the 20D's flash is only 43 at ISO 100 ([email protected] 200), the proper f-stop for correct exposure at 20 feet is f=3.0 (~2.8). Since you shot at f=5.6, the contribution of the flash was 2 stops underexposed. The ambient light probably contributed much more to the exposure than the flash, so wing motion was about the same as if you had not used flash. To stop the wing motion you really need a much more powerful external Flash unit, e.g. GN about 160 @ ISO 100 (226 @ ISO 200). A powerful external flash may typically have a duration of 1/2000. Then at 20 feet you could shoot at f=11 at your fastest sync speed (1/200sec). Then the contribution of the flash would be MUCH greater than that of the ambient light at dusk and flash duration of 1/2000 would slow down those wings quite a lot. Bob Williams
To stop the wing motion you really need a much more powerful external Flash unit, e.g. GN about 160 @ ISO 100 (226 @ ISO 200). A powerful external flash may typically have a duration of 1/2000. Then at 20 feet you could shoot at f=11 at your fastest sync speed (1/200sec). Then the contribution of the flash would be MUCH greater than that of the ambient light at dusk and flash duration of 1/2000 would slow down those wings quite a lot. ======================== I was using the 550EX flash. And even with a duration of 1/2000 it isn't gonna stop the wings.
Annika1980 writes ... While in Santa Fe last week I noticed dozens of hummingbirds around a feeder at the far end of Canyon Rd and set up a 500 f/4 w/ 1.4x converter (about 910 mm equiv with the 1D M II) and took several hundred flight shots, with a few successes (it's tough to focus on them mid-air with 900+ mm since they are constantly fighting with each other and zipping around). No flash, just natural light so the wings are blurred ... here are three, if I have time I'll post a few others since we caught other species as well (including a couple of Calliope's and one with a dark purple neck I couldn't ID without a guide book) ... enjoy, if you like this kind of stuff ... http://members.aol.com/bhilton665/broadtail_1.jpg http://members.aol.com/bhilton665/rufous_75.jpg http://members.aol.com/bhilton665/rufous_19.jpg Bill
Very nice, Bill. The last one (19) appears to be somewhat surreal - overly defined - like a weatherman against a greenscreen, esp along his chest. Is the air that hazy brownish there as well? Good work! _______________________________________________________________________________ Posted Via Uncensored-News.Com - Accounts Starting At $6.95 - http://www.uncensored-news.com <><><><><><><> The Worlds Uncensored News Source <><><><><><><><>
George Kerby wrote .. Thanks George. No, the air is pretty clean up in Santa Fe ... the brown background is actually a stucco wall that's at an angle so it looks dark even in direct sun. From where I was shooting it was the best choice of backgrounds (I'm very picky about backgrounds, hate it when they are too busy and detract from the main subject). My wife, who is an excellent photographer, managed to get a bit different angle at another time (looking into some vegetation with a bit of side-lighting) but the long lens tends to blur a busy background too if the tonality is similar enough and it's far enough back from the focus point ... here are some of her shots from the same place, the first three with a lighter vegetation background and the fourth a nice shot of a wasp and hummer on the same feeder ... http://members.aol.com/bhilton665/rufous_U8507.jpg http://members.aol.com/bhilton665/fem_8881.jpg http://members.aol.com/bhilton665/rufous_fem_8840.jpg http://members.aol.com/bhilton665/rufous_wasp_U8647.jpg .... and here are three more from me, with two different species (Black-chin male and a hard-to-get Calliope male) and one final one showing the stucco wall going from shadow to light ... enjoy. http://members.aol.com/bhilton665/blackchin_2042.jpg http://members.aol.com/bhilton665/calliope_2108.jpg http://members.aol.com/bhilton665/rufous_check_2050.jpg Bill
Agreed. You two are a very talented couple. I REALLY like the wasp. Looks like a 'threat' to the hummer-but I know it is not. Great juxtaposition, though. The stucco shadow explains it all as well. Thanks for sharing... _______________________________________________________________________________ Posted Via Uncensored-News.Com - Accounts Starting At $6.95 - http://www.uncensored-news.com <><><><><><><> The Worlds Uncensored News Source <><><><><><><><>
And Carolyn.... Both sets are great, and if I didn't know better, I'd think the images were photoshopped a lot, what with the nigh perfect backgrounds, although I don't care for the adobe/stucco brown, the birds are superbly isolated. Did you do any other photog. in SF? Used to roam there a lot.
John McWilliams writes ... You are the 2nd or 3rd person to mention this so for grins I "Photoshopped" (I guess it's now a verb the calliope shot just to see how easy it is to 'cheat' and add a blue sky instead of the yucky brown stucco background ... I grabbed the jpeg, used Select/Color Range to select the background color, saved the selection as an alpha channel (Select/Save Selection), brushed over the areas on the bird that were selected because they were the same color as the background with black to fine tune the mask, reloaded the selection (Select/Load Selection), made an Adjustment Layer of type Hue/Sat (which picks up the selection as a layer mask) and changed the Hue to get a blue (sky) background. This took about 45 seconds ... here are the original and the cheat version, the cheat version has a splotchy sky because I used the jpeg as a starting point, I'm pretty sure if I go back to the original and spend a bit more time on this I could have done the sky so well you couldn't tell with certainty which version was real. http://members.aol.com/bhilton665/calliope_2108.jpg http://members.aol.com/bhilton665/calliope_2108_cheat.jpg Yes, we were actually up there for a week photographing other things and just happened to see the hummingbirds the afternoon we arrived, before we got really started with other stuff. Luckily we just happened to have a 500 f/4 handy Great place if you can afford to live there ... otherwise a nice place to visit. Bill
Hi Bill. After seeing Bret's, Bill's and Carol's excellent hummingbird photos, it inspired me to go back and dig out some I did on Mt Evans, Colorado in 2003. These are with a Canon 10D and a 500 f/4 which has a very narrow depth of field. The backgrounds are pine trees maybe 40 feet away, so the background is smooth and varies from greenish to brownish depending on if trunk or branches are in view. These are mostly full frame crop (maybe 10% cropped out). While the wings are not perfectly frozen, there is only small blur with 1/1500 to 1/2000 second exposures. http://www.clarkvision.com/galleries/gallery.NEW/web/humming_bird.c05.29.2003.IMG_4126.b-700.html http://www.clarkvision.com/galleries/gallery.NEW/web/humming_bird.c05.29.2003.IMG_4142.b-700.html http://www.clarkvision.com/galleries/gallery.NEW/web/humming_bird.c05.29.2003.IMG_4107.b-700.html Roger
Excellent, also. I am wondering, tho, if a perfectly smoothed out bg is as aesthetically pleasing as one where there's some vague notion of trees or buildings in the bokeh (if that's a right way to use the term.) Or, put it this way- I am pretty sure I'd prefer it, but perhaps for other reasons, a totally smooth bg is the accepted norm. Just to be sure, these are fantastic images..... best wishes,
Roger Clark writes ... Hi Roger, First two are male Broad-tailed Hummingbirds. Third one is a female, likely a Broad-tailed but according to the guide books it's very difficult to distinguish between female Broad-tail, Rufous and Calliope Hummingbirds ... we had all three species of females coming to the feeders at Santa Fe and it was tough to tell them apart ... I don't think the Calliope is found in the area you took your shots though. Bill
Sometimes you don't have a choice if you need your lens wide open to keep the shutter speed up and the background is appreciably farther away than your subject.
