Barn Swallow

[Pepe Reigada]

f:11: s:1/250; ISO: 200
Four flashes working to 1/16. Artificial BG.
Slight crop for composition.
Thanks for for your comments

[Satish Ranadive]

Pepe,
Excellent incoming shot. Beautiful set with nice backdrop.I like the wing position, nice HA, colors and composition.
Would remove the dark blue blob from the top,above the left wing.

Regards,
Satish.

[William Dickson]

Satish has said it all. Well done Pepe, a very nice image indeed

[David Salem]

For a second there I thought this was a natural shot until I read your info. Very nice work on the setup and I like the BG that you chose. Overall sharp and exposed well. Nice shot

[Karl Egressy]

Nice shot, excellent setup that worked for you.

[Arthur Morris]

Hi Pepe,

This is certainly impressive even at a set-up but there are several things that concern me.

1-The head, face, and upper wing look over-processed as if over-lightened, over-shyou tadow highlighted, or over NIKked....
2-There is a spot of funky blue along the upper frame edge just left of center. Otherwise the clouds in the BKGR look quite natural.
3-The BKGR looks quite noisy. Try softening it up with Filter/Blur/Surface Blur.

Please tell us more about the set-up. How did you get the bird to fly where you needed it to fly?
Can you post the full frame ORIG in another pane?

[Pepe Reigada]

VERTICAL PHOTO: It is the exterior part of the montage. The nest of swallows is the interior of the room.
1 - Camera of fotos:. Nikon D300, with lens Nikkor 85mm f1, 8, speed 1/250, F: 11, ISO 200, balance of whites in the main flash
2-Flash of 1 / 16 of the speed, joined the camera for cable of PC synchronization.
3 -Zenithal flash in 1/16. It works as slave.
4-Flash to 1/16. It works as slave.
5-Box of controls of the barrier of infrared. The sensor is inside the room.
6 -Carton to close the door. There has a window of 45x30 cm. where the swallow enters and goes out with supreme facility. The size of the window is proportional to the dimensions of 3X2 sensor of the camera.
HORIZONTAL PHOTO: It corresponds to the interior of the room where one finds the nest of swallow.
1-Se it divides of inside the box, with his window of 45x30 cm.
2-Artificial BG. It is a question of a photo of the sky with nubecillas. Form in a vinyl of 100 cm. X70cm. Cost 24 Euros.
3 -Flash to 1/16, to illuminate the BG. It works as slave.
4-Flash to 1/16, to illuminate to BG against and "" to separate " the bird of the BG. It works as slave.
5-Sensor of the barrier of infrared.

[Doug Brown]

A most impressive setup, and the results are spectacular! Perhaps a slightly more OOF BG to give the image a more natural look; you could also try a non-sky BG.

[David Salem]

Thanks for showing the components of this pretty sophisticated setup. Very cool!

[Arthur Morris]

Ditto David Salem. I slightly smaller aperture might yield darker BLUEs on the head.... Thanks for sharing your craftsman ship with us here.

[vishaljadhav]

Dramatic is how i would put the shot

I am amazed with the setup , such a array of things, still counting , impressive

[arash_hazeghi]

very elaborate setup, thanks for sharing the details. looking forward to more...

[adrian dancy]

Impressive effort here. The bird looks flashed but with careful work I think the effect of this can be much reduced to make the image look more natural.
There is a turquoise blob at the top of the image.
There is a pale vertical artefact on RHS of image close to the border and about a 1/4 of the way down.
The sky looks fine to me and is in keeping with wide angle images.
It is a pity that the bird's forked tail did not show fully but all in all the flight pose still holds up fairly well.
I do not see any noise in the background as suggested above. In fact quite the contrary.

As stated an impressive set up, an impressive image for sure, but a bit more work will improve it.