I am looking forward to Linda's guide for hummingbird photography, but in the meantime I have a few questions someone may be able to answer regarding setting up a high speed flash system with multiple flashes. Assuming a 4-6 flash set-up with one or two of the flashes used to light up the BG...
1. Assuming you set them manually at 1/30th or 1/64th power, and triggering them wireless (in my case using Canon master/slave), how fast can the flashes recycle? Put another way, can they keep up with 8-10 fps?
2. If using an xsync at say a 200th, the flashes at fractional power will be what freezes the hummers wings. Is there any reason why you cannot set the flash(s) aimed at the BG on full power, thus maybe getting by with only one flash at the BG?
3. In a similar vein, while I suspect it is a bad idea to try and incorporate 3rd party or older flashes using an optical slave as one of the main subject flashes (because of a possible delay in firing), is there any reason why you can't use a flash with an optical slave for the BG lighting? It would be great to be able to make use of one or two of my older flashes in this set up.
1. Maybe at first, but depending on the power source, they will fade.
2. You could, but this strobe definately wouldn't keep up with the mutli bursts.
3. Old strobes have worked fine for me using optical slaves at the 1/250sec sync speed or lower on my fish tanks, (have yet to use these setups for hummers with digital but did use them with film). I don't know if the older strobes will work at the higher sync speeds possible with the newer digita bodies. I have also heard that some older strobes will damage your digital camera body if you use them on the hot shoe or wired, something about the voltage that is required to trigger them being too high.)
Hey Bill! I'm thinking about investing in a multiflash setup myself. Canon just announced their new 430 series flash; not sure on the price, but I'm thinking about picking up four of them and using my 580 to light the BG. I'll be following this thread with interest.
For my Hummingbird flash photographs, I use two SB800s and 3 or 4 older SB26s. As long as the flash duration of the units are fairly close, there is no problem. Also, in the Ralph Paonessa tutorial link that I posted before, he mentions the need for a flash meter. Obviously, with digital cameras they aren't necessary. You can use the histogram to check exposures and adjust flash position, zoom setting on flash, ISO setting and aperture on camera to achieve a proper exposure. It really won't take long before you can set them up almost perfectly without having to do much adjusting. I kept notes the first few times on flash-subject distance and settings so that I could easily reproduce the setup.
Regarding whether the flash can keep up with the frame rate of the camera, it really depends upon the manual power setting you use. If you set the power setting at 1/8 or 1/16 power, you can easily fire a burst of images before the flash capacitors deplete and have to recharge.
1. Assuming you set them manually at 1/30th or 1/64th power, and triggering them wireless (in my case using Canon master/slave), how fast can the flashes recycle? Put another way, can they keep up with 8-10 fps?
1:16 or 1:32 are used most commonly. The flashes can pretty well keep up with any frame rate as they are putting out only a small fraction of their power.
2. If using an xsync at say a 200th, the flashes at fractional power will be what freezes the hummers wings. Is there any reason why you cannot set the flash(s) aimed at the BG on full power, thus maybe getting by with only one flash at the BG?
No good. The light will bounce back and cause ghosting. Hard to believe, but have been there, done that.
3. In a similar vein, while I suspect it is a bad idea to try and incorporate 3rd party or older flashes using an optical slave as one of the main subject flashes (because of a possible delay in firing), is there any reason why you can't use a flash with an optical slave for the BG lighting? It would be great to be able to make use of one or two of my older flashes in this set up.
You can use an optical slave but it is strongly recommended that all flashes be the same. If any are out of synch, ghosting will result...
We are in the final editing stages of the guide. It is turning out to be far more extensive than fist imagined... Thanks for your interest.
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Hummingbird Multiple HS Flash questions
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