Hummingbird in the Dark

[Michael Yessik]

I am very new to flash and have a lot to learn. Last night the hummingbird came around when it was nearly dark, so it was hard to see the bird at all. This made it very difficult to focus and difficult (for me) to get the exposure right. The shutter speed was 1/15s, and the aperture at the maximum f4 for the lens,so there is essentially no ambient light - it's all from the flash. The focus and exposure may not be perfect, but I thought the pose was great, and I like to look at from an artistic point-of-view, i.e., more on the surrealistic side.

Comments and/or advice?

[Lance Peters]

Hi Michael - guess I ll be the first....

Dont know much about the use of flash myself, to my untrained eye it looks over flashed, and the bill has merged into the BG. Well done for having a go though - I haven't ventured into the use of flash as yet.

I am sure some of the guys who use flash regularly will be able to help you out.

I'd grab Arties book (The art of Bird Photography II ) as a starting point.

:)

[Gus Hallgren]

Hi: In the Educational Forum, Artie started: "High Speed Sync Flash Info" and this link for Cannon cameras looks very good: http://photonotes.org/articles/eos-flash/index.html#fp . . . Uncle Gus

[Gail Spitler]

The pose is interesting and uncommon. I agree with Lance that the image looks a bit overexposed; perhaps the flash is too close.
I also haven't yet ventured into flash very much and am looking to reading comments of the more experienced.
Thanks for posting.
Gail

[Arthur Morris]

Lots to say here... First off, I like the pose. The eye needs to be repaired so as to eliminate the dreaded purple eye shine... The (flash) EXPp looks fine to me. With a shutter speed of only 1/15sec the image is sharp--there is no ghosting of the wings. This tells us that the flash indeed provided all of the light for the exposure. This is known as flash as main light. When using this technique with a distant BKGR, as here, the BKGR will be rendered black as the light from the flash falls off with the SQ of the distance.

Folks who have no clue as to how to use their flash are directed to the "Flash Simplified" section of my CD book, ABP II. Fill flash, flash as main light, and manual flash are all explained in simple terms. That plus another 910 pages of great info...