Rufous Hummingbird

Greg Scott

you can see this to fit your screen here:http://www.gregscott.com/gjs_2007_spring/hummingbird/20070311_1948_100_0560.rufous_humminbird.html


Taken at Cave Creek Canyon, Arizona March 10, 2007 Taken with a Canon 5d set at manual, shutter 1/200 sec, ISO 100, tripod mounted.
The lens was a Canon 100mm F2.8 macro lens set at F20, manually prefocused on the spot where the hummingbird hovered in front of the birdfeeder.
A custom Olson "Ultra" flash was used on low power, with 4 flash heads, each tripod mounted, and a flash duration of 1/33000 second. The flash is triggered with a sync cable from the camera. The flash has no automatic features.
I don't recall if the shot was taken in bright light or shade. At these settings, it could have been either.
A white cardboard was used for a background. It appears grey because it is illuminated by the flash but is farther away than the bird.
A shutter release cable was used to allow waiting for birds while seated and shooting photos without much movement.
I preset exposure by photographing my hand properly in test shots.
I preset focus by putting a blade of grass in the port of the hummingbird feeder to focus a few inches away from the feeder, so I could crop the feeder out of the shot.
The flash heads were just over a foot from the feeder, as well as the front of the camera lens.
There were flash heads on each side of the camera, one high on the right side, and another aimed at the cardboard background.They were as close to the camera as the tripods would allow. It seems to be pretty easy to get at least some irridescence on the Rufous hummingbird's male gorget without careful flash positioning, however, unlike some species like the Magnificent, or the Black-Chinned.
If attempting to replicate this photo with shoe mounted strobes and slaves, I would use my 2 Canon 550ex flashes as slaves, my Canon 580ex flash as a master. The master flash would be tripod mounted, and connected to the camera via an "off-camera" hot shoe to flash cable. The flashes would be set to manual 1/128th power for maximum speed (about 1/20000th second) and set to 105 mm focal length. Because of less light output, the ISO would be changed to about 320 or 400, the aperture set to F16 or 18, and the flashes move somewhat closer to the bird. Again, because of lower light output with commercial shoe mounted flash, I would only shoot with background and hummingbird in shade, to avoid ghost images from ambient light.

Greg Scott
http://www.gregscott.com

Dick on Aruba

You must be one happy photographer with results like this. Awesome capture.
I'm amazed that the hummer let you come so close with your equipment.

Thanks for sharing the details.

Dick.

Maestro

Amazing capture with wonderful detail! One question, was your shutter speed really 1/200 or should it say 1/2000? It would seem to stop the action as wonderfully as you did, you would need the 1/2000 setting. What a setup! I get confused just using my external flash in auto mode. I'd love to be able to do this.

raptorcaptor

Nice shot Greg! Good detail.

Greg Scott

The flash is responsible for the speed of the photo.
In response to the question on shutter speed, yes it was 1/200 second, which is the fastest flash sync speed on my camera.* The trick here is that at the other settings, mainly f20, IS0 100, the ambient light exposure was at least 2 stops underexposed, probably more. This prevents a ghost image. The exposure from the flash is all that makes the photograph for practical purposes. This would normally be one of those "black background" shots you often see with flash, thus the need for the white cardboard background and/or a seperate strobe to illuminate the background.

* the sync speed is the fastest shutter speed at which the entire shutter is open at one time. At faster shutter speeds, a "faster" shutter is "simulated" by shutting the shutter before it's fully open. The result is a thin slit travelling across the frame. Which means it lets in less light, but the shutter is never physically "faster" in linear velocity, than it is at the sync speed, as I've defined it. If you use a flash at a speed above sync speed, you'll find that the flash illuminates a slit that is open at the time the flash fires, and the rest of the frame has no flash exposure.

If you want to force a flash to a short duration, set it manually to the lowest available power, and the flash will be the shortest possible with that unit.

I suppose you could accomplish the same thing, in theory, by leaving the flash on auto, and just getting as close to the subject as possible, but this may not work because the subject is in the frame for such a short period of time, and any delay for pre-flash metering may be unacceptable. I don't know how significant this effect would be, I've never tried it that way.

Maestro

Greg Scott wrote:

In response to the question on shutter speed, yes it was 1/200 second, which is the fastest flash sync speed on my camera.* The trick here is that at the other settings, mainly f20, IS0 100, the ambient light exposure was at least 2 stops underexposed, probably more. This prevents a ghost image. The exposure from the flash is all that makes the photograph for practical purposes. This would normally be one of those "black background" shots you often see with flash, thus the need for the white cardboard background and/or a seperate strobe to illuminate the background.

* the sync speed is the fastest shutter speed at which the entire shutter is open at one time. At faster shutter speeds, a "faster" shutter is "simulated" by shutting the shutter before it's fully open. The result is a thin slit travelling across the frame. Which means it lets in less light, but the shutter is never physically "faster" in linear velocity, than it is at the sync speed, as I've defined it. If you use a flash at a speed above sync speed, you'll find that the flash illuminates a slit that is open at the time the flash fires, and the rest of the frame has no flash exposure.

If you want to force a flash to a short duration, set it manually to the lowest available power, and the flash will be the shortest possible with that unit.

I suppose you could accomplish the same thing, in theory, by leaving the flash on auto, and just getting as close to the subject as possible, but this may not work because the subject is in the frame for such a short period of time, and any delay for pre-flash metering may be unacceptable. I don't know how significant this effect would be, I've never tried it that way.

Thanks for the explanation. I really need to try to understand flash photogprahy more.

Harryb

Welcome to Dgrin Greg and that is an outstanding capture

emmalou

Awesome! Nice details for sure!

Shasoc

Beautiful capture. Well exposed and with sharp detail.

ShepsMom

Holly Macro! What a shot. How close were you again??

Greg Scott

ShepsMom wrote:

Holly Macro! What a shot. How close were you again??

I was maybe 15 feet away. The camera was about 1 to 1.5 feet from the bird to the lens. I used an electric cable release that Canon makes. No electric eye, just hand triggering, which is pretty easy with a hovering bird.

However, sometimes I took the shot right from at the camera if the bird came while I was checking ambient light, framing, or prior exposures. I've got no way of telling which shots those were. Hummingbirds can be pretty bold. I've had them feed from the feeders while I'm hanging them. I have friends who hand feed them routinely. I doubt that they consider us more than a minimal slow moving threat, just like a cow perhaps.

By the way, I got a great "butt" shot of a hummer this year. I composited it with a flower:
http://www.gregscott.com/gjs_2007_spring/hummingbird/20070311_1617_100_0520.rufous_humminbird.jpg
Here's a thumbnail: