Humming Bird C&C

[Ecas32]

this was my first attempt ever at shooting a humming bird. all i had to use was my on camera flash, so i did the best i could

edit- wow the image quality totally deteriated when i put it on photobucket...

 

[Gaerek]

Neat shot. I've never tried shooting a hummingbird before, but it's something I might give a go at if the weather ever gets better.

It looks like the flash blew some of your highlights, which is unfortunate. It also looks a little overexposed for my tastes. A tighter crop might look a bit better, but that's pretty subjective.

All in all, a pretty nice shot.

 

[Ecas32]

ya i would of liked to get a better crop but the bird was almost out of the frame in this shot.... im gonna try again tomorrow, hopefully with better results. i may try and make a diffuser for the flash though so its not as harsh

 

[Plato]

Wow.

 

[c.cloudwalker]

I like this photo quite a bit. I don't see any blown area on my monitor except a couple of small spots on the feeder which I could live with.

I love the wing image in front of the bird.

 

[Ecas32]

thanks cloudwalker!
and plato- ill take that as a compliment i guess? lol

and haha ya i didnt even notice the wing motinon in front of it... but susposedly they beat 80 times a second !!

 

[c.cloudwalker]

Actually, it depends on their size. Some have been clocked at 200 beats per second but the larger ones can go as slow as 18 bps. At least, that's what I've read. I haven't tried counting myself

All that to say that if you wanted to freeze the wing motion, you'd need to find the bigger ones to shoot.

 

[Ecas32]

yup. the ways the pros do it though is use a strobe flash to do the freezing and jack there aperature up to like f11-13. they actually have to use like 3-5 strobe flashes to be able to light everything- foreground, background, and way back ground lol.

all i had was one on camera built in flash

 

[choudhrysaab]

very well captured =)

 

[kundalini]

Hummers are very methodical in their behaviour around a feeder. Their tendancy is to hover, go in for a sip, back off and hover before doing the old Castanza double dip. That's where you want to catch them.... on the second hover. If you were to pre-focus on the feeder and then change your PoV so that the feeder is not in the frame, I think you will have a much more pleasing result. I would suggest an aperture of f/4 to f/6.3, shutter speed as fast as you can stand, flash if necessary.

If you had a multiple-port feeder, then I would suggest to tape over the ports you're not interested in shooting. They learn very quickly where the nectar is.

 

[kundalini]

yup. the ways the pros do it though is use a strobe flash to do the freezing and jack there aperature up to like f11-13. they actually have to use like 3-5 strobe flashes to be able to light everything- foreground, background, and way back ground lol.

all i had was one on camera built in flash

That may be, but it isn't absolutely necessary for "decent" results. The built-in flash sucks and shouldn't be used except as a last ditch effort to save a capture.

These were captured sans flash.

Click

Click

 

[Goontz]

These were captured sans flash.

FYI, your links don't appear to be working. "Page not found."


Edit: You just have some TPF address in front of the image tags. Or maybe you have image tags when you meant it to be a link.

 

[Ecas32]

That may be, but it isn't absolutely necessary for "decent" results. The built-in flash sucks and shouldn't be used except as a last ditch effort to save a capture.

These were captured sans flash.

well i guess you could consider it as a last ditch effort to save the capture, but its all i had. im 15 and cant afford a shoe flash ):

whats a sans flash?

 

[Goontz]

whats a sans flash?

"Sans" meaning "without."

 

[Ecas32]

oh ok
so ya thats pretty much the same thing as what i did, but instead of having natural lighting to make the bird bright, i just used the fill flash, artificial lighting.

all i was saying is that the pros use most only artificial lighting, no ambient light because of the high f stop they use, they have to light everything with strobes