Versicolored Emerald

[Octavio Campos Salles]

Hi all, my first post here on this great forum. Will start with a typical hummingbird from the Atlantic Rainforest of SE Brazil, the Versicolored Emerald.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3393/3306944340_cd517b3f13_o.jpg

Nikon D200
Nikkor 600mm f/4 AF-S
multi-flash

[Randy Stout]

Octavio:

Welcome to BPN. A lovely first post.

Your technicals look good, sharp, nice head angle, great wing extension,nice background too.

I would eliminate some of the extra catchlights from the flashes.

My main concern would be the relative impact of the bright flower and the smaller darker hummer. I would consider lowering the brightness of the flower a bit, and possibly crop in from the right to reduce its domination of the frame.

It is always helpful to include full exposure details to help us evaluate your images, including the ISO.

Welcome once again, and I look forward to seeing more of these beauties.

Randy

[Ondrej Prosicky]

Very nice. Do you have many hummingbirds in Brasil?

[Ramon M. Casares]

Welcome! First, I hope you enjoy participating here, nice first post, hreat light, comp, BG, detail, colors and species. Congratulatinos!

[Randy Stout]

Octavio:

Just a quick repost, darken, slightly desatted flower, brightened hummer, knocked out one of the catchlights, cropped.

Just a slightly different take on your lovely image.

Randy

[Stu Bowie]

Welcome Octavio. Super capture of the HB, lovely colours, well exposed and nice and sharp. Im going the other way, and say that I actually like your comp as is, infact, I like everything about this. Congrats.

[Doug Brown]

Glad to have you as a part of the BPN community Octavio! You've achieved a very natural look with your multiflash setup. How many flashes did you use? For birds with darker plumages, I'll typically boost my ISO or open up my aperture just a little. I like what Randy did with the relative brightness of the bird and the flower although I prefer the original crop. Thanks for posting!

[arash_hazeghi]

Nice shot, I like Randy's repost, tighter crop, lighter bird, detail and pose is very good. Welcome!

[Juan Carlos Vindas]

Bienvenido Octavio!
(Desde que estaba en la escuela no escucho ese nombre!)

Welcome to BPN!
Great first post, lovely hummer and very interesting plant, do you know what species this one is?

[Fernando Cerra]

Muy buena Octavio. Keep them coming !

Saludos
Fernando C

[Adams Serra]

Oi Octavio,
Bem vindo ao BPN. Lindo beija flor e flor. o Re-post do Randy clareou a foto e na minha opiniao ficou melhor.
Espero ver mais de suas imagens.

Abracos,
Adams

[Maxis Gamez]

Oi Octavio,
Bem vindo ao BPN. Lindo beija flor e flor. o Re-post do Randy clareou a foto e na minha opiniao ficou melhor.
Espero ver mais de suas imagens.

Abracos,
Adams

What Adams said!! :)

Love the original post. Excellent colors and clean BG!

Forza Ferrari!

[Dejan Stojanovic]

Awesome pic! i love seeing these photos of exotic nectarivores feeding on Australian flowers- over here (in Australia) the flower in your picture (Grevellia sp.) is usually pollinated by parrots and honeyeaters!
great shot, particularly for the concept of species introduction that it illustrates so interestingly!

[Octavio Campos Salles]

Thank you all for the welcome.

Ondrej, yes we do have a lot of hummingbirds in Brazil, including several endemic species.

Doug, I used only 3 flashes for this shot, so that means only 2 ligthing the bird. I wish I could use more. That's one of the reasons why the wings are not completely frozen.

Juan Carlos, the flower is a Grevillea from Australia, like Dejan said. I wish I had used a native flower, but this was really a "practice" session as I really need one or two more flashes to really achieve the light I want.

Adams, muito bom ver um brasileiro por aqui!

Dejan, the Grevilleas are quite common on gardens around here. Hummingbirds love it.

[Greg Basco]

Octavio, no reason to use more flashes as the light on the bird is very nice. If you were to add an additional flash, I would suggest a backlight at 45 degrees behind the flower.

The number of flashes should not determine the ability to stop the wings. As long as you have a short enough flash duration and no ambient light entering the image, the wings will be stopped.

Were these studio lights? I ask about the studio lights because of the catchlight and because when I use studio lights here in Costa Rica, they have a longer flash duration, which results in slightly blurred wings. I think a bit of wing motion is just fine, and it works very well in your image here.

Cheers from Costa Rica,
Greg Basco

[Arthur Morris]

Hi Octavio and welcome. Randy did a good job on the repost but I do like your original COMP better. Check out Linda Robbins Guide to High Speed Flash Hummingbird Photography as you are a bit confused about the flashes... You can find a link on the BAA home page.

We look forward to seeing more of you and your work here.

[Octavio Campos Salles]

Greg, this was with two Vivitar 285-HV and one Nikon SB-600. The reason I need at least one more flash is that I do want to freeze the wings. But I also want to use umbrellas on every flash pointing at the bird, as it gives a much better light quality IMO. But the umbrellas also take away a lot of light power, so I'm forced to use a longer flash duration to achieve the light I need. Another strong reason is that I'm forced to use a rather large aperture and that means getting the wing tips out of focus or even the entire bird sometimes.

One or two more flash units would be of great help here as I would have more light so that I can use a smaller aperture, and also use them at a lower power setting to really freeze the wings.

Arthur, thanks for the welcome.

[Greg Basco]

Hi, Octavio. Well, I guessed half-right. I agree that the umbrellas make for a nice soft light. I assume you are using the Nikon flash on the background to avoid any possible problems with flash stutter due to different flash durations at the same power between different models. Many people advise using only one model flash but I have found that you can mix and match without much problem. What power are you using your flashes at with the umbrella?

Cheers,
Greg

[Octavio Campos Salles]

Greg, yeah I'm using the SB-600 at the background, never had a problem with ghosting...

I'm using them at 1/8 of power but I would like to use at 1/16th.

regards

[Greg Basco]

Hi, Octavio. I'm just trying to think about how to work out your problems while you get your hands on another Vivitar flash. Although I also have to say that I really liked the nice texture you had in terms of lighting for this bird, so my thinking would be to tinker with your existing settings rather than adding frontal flashes simply to get more overall light. Again, to my eye, a backlight flash would add more to the image than more front flashes.

But I do understand your preference for freezing the wings and thus your quest for lower power on the flash and a smaller aperture. Any chance you could up your ISO by one stop to get the flashes from 1/8th down to 1/16th power? And then what about moving your front flashes a bit closer to be able to stop down? Or are you already as close as you can get? Hope you don't mind the ideas -- just trying to build on what I thought was a really nice image!

Cheers,
Greg

[Octavio Campos Salles]

Greg, I think that for this shot I was using ISO 250 and the flashes (the umbrellas, actually) were as close as they could get. I'm not really wishing to raise the ISO one stop to 500, that would be quite noisy on my D200. If I had a D300 it would probably be ok... but since I don't... I could not open up the aperture any more either.

I do love the idea of a backlight, it adds some drama and makes the image more 3 dimensional. Probably two more flash units would solve my problem. I'll have to buy an SB-900 sooner or later anyway, so that leaves only a cheap Vivitar to go.

[Greg Basco]

Hi, Octavio. Ok, this certainly makes sense. I think that you might want to think twice about mixing in too many different flashes, however. I have set up multi-flash for hummingbirds for Nikon clients here in Costa Rica mixing SB-900, SB-800, and SB-600 and haven't really had a problem except for the fact that the 600s (as with Canon 430 EX vs. 550 or 580) will recycle more quickly than the big flashes. I know that everything is an expense but if I were you and were going to add two more flashes, I would think about picking up two cheap Vivitars for this purpose and leaving your SB-600 for the background. You won't need an umbrella for the backlight flash and might not even need one for the extra frontal flash depending on how you position it. I generally use two lights on the bird from the front, one as a backlight, and one on the background for my hummingbird photography here, the idea being to try to keep the number of catchlights to one or two.

I'll try to post an example from this scheme later today.

Best of luck -- hummingbird photography sure is fun!
Greg

[Mark Dumbleton]

Superb stuff. Bird seems well lit, is nice and sharp and with a killer BG!
Well done!