Caught this little Female Hummer yesteday morning flying in front of a Red Clay retangular flower pot. Playing with Flash at full as advised by "The Maestro" - To answer, my flash is a TTL, goes from -3 t0 +3, reach showing 18.5 feet, and taking photo from about 8' away at Auto TTL. Still experimenting, but see that Hummingbird feathers can absorb a lot of light. A Northern Cardinal is blown out with that setup. With all this experimenting I have found out getting rid of the blinkies might work on one bird, but not another with the same setting, also have found out for me that I do better going a little further than just getting rid of the blinkies, it is not enough, and I will be glad when I can make better judgement calls from experience, especially on stick birds.
Uncle Gus
Comments are always welcome and eagerly looked forward too - BPN the best value in the world.
Olympus E-520 IS, Zuiko 70-300 SD @ 600 mm HH
Aperture priority
F/5.6, 1/1000s, ISO 100, 0.00eV, Auto WB, Flash full +3
Last edited by Gus Hallgren; 06-13-2009 at 07:02 AM.
Hi Gus keep experimenting with the flash If you want full flash Go to Mode then 1:1 Will give the max amount of light
I like to see the bird a little brighter, with that color bg and your setting you should have been very close !!! As always the little head pointing more to the right would make a prettier image. Bg wise you can smooth out the bg to eliminate all texture !!! Does look neat !!!!
I like the capture Uncle Gus,
The dark orange background showcases your bird quite well, agree with Mr. Forns' fine assessment. Looking forward to your next one...good show...:cool:
Hi Uncle Gus. I do like your capture but agree that it is quite dark. I would never try to get hummers at ISO 100, time to crank it up! :D To me, the hardest lesson to learn about flash is how to balance the camera exposure and the flash output, and not suggesting that I've learned it yet. ;) Going to higher ISO would allow you to use +1 EV at the same shutter speed at the very least.
Was very interested to read your comments about the blinkies and needing to go lower than that for some birds. I find that my camera will show no blinkies but still overexpose the image if I am shooting any bird with white on it. For full-white birds like gulls and terns, I need to go at least 2/3 of a stop under where the blinkies stop, if that makes any sense. I think it is partly due to the fact that the image on your LCD screen is a jpeg and doesn't necessarily reflect what the raw file will show. Could be wrong, wouldn't be the first time! :eek:
Anna's Hummingbird in our Garden
