Young female Anna's Hummingbird

[Steve Smith]

The bird is backing off from a glass feeder. I ran an extension cord out into the back yard and hooked up a 300 watt studio strobe and umbrella , placing them in the potato patch underneath the feeder. The effective shutter speed is determined by the duration of the flash, not by the camera setting. Comments and suggestions appreciated.

Canon 70D; 1/125 sec; f16; ISO 200, Tamron 150-600 at 500mm

[Randy Stout]

Steve:

Because of your lighting setup, I guess we can call this an outdoor studio shot!

Always lots of fun trying to capture hummers.

I do find the balance of flash and ambient light perhaps too strong on the flashed side, and the color temp. is a little cool.

The head is a little soft as if the focus was off just a bit.

Will look forward to more images.

Cheers

Randy

[dankearl]

Nice lighting job, the Hummer needs to be turned a bit more toward you...

[Steve Smith]

Hi Randy,

Yes, I agree with all of your comments. We have six regular hummingbird visitors plus a few passers by. I am trying different lighting setups with the strobe, speed lights and reflectors. I am also comparing focusing on a specific point, then turning off the autofocus versus chasing the bird with the autofocus turned on. So far chasing the bird is working out better. This shot was taken after pre-focusing on a selected point, then turning the autofocus off. At about 12 feet from the bird with aperture f16 , 500mm focal length and a sensor circle of confusion of 0.019 mm, the depth of field I am working with is between 1-2 inches.

Steve