The Backside View

[Doug Brown]

I caught this Green-Breasted Mango hummingbird displaying towards another hummer at one of our feeder setups at Rancho Naturalista in Costa Rica. Naturalista is known for its incredible variety of birds, and is home to the rare Snowcap. The food is pretty darn good too!



Canon 50D, 70-200mm f/4 + 1.4x @ 169mm, f/16, 1/200, ISO 200, manual exposure, 5 flashes, hand held

[Krijn Trimbos]

The simetry is very striking here! Love the tail colours and detail! Nice BG too. Excellent shot!

[A_Maddah]

Wow
Very nice,I really like the angle,details and the bg`s color!!!
superb timing .

Asad

[Harshad Barve]

What a amazing shot this is Doug
Mind blowing , winner all the way

TFS

[Ashutosh Sinha]

Cool shot, I love that fanned tail. How do you get such sharp images hand held at 1/200s. You must have very steady hand.
Rancho Naturalista is magical place for birding and I totally agree with you on Rancho Naturalista food :-). They took care my vegetarian food need very well and I was having feast every day.

[Brian Zwiebel]

A unique perspective on a hummingbird. I love the full fanned tail with lots of great detail.

Good Shooting!

BZ

[Doug Brown]

How do you get such sharp images hand held at 1/200s. You must have very steady hand.

Actually a steady hand is not required in multiple flash hummingbird photography. You set your camera to manual exposure and dial in several stops of underexposure using a high f number for plenty of DOF and low ISO. Set your shutter speed to a number below the camera's high-speed sync speed. In this way you'll be completely dependent on the output of your flashes to illuminate your subject. Set the flashes to manual mode and dial the power down to 1/16 or 1/32. At this low level of power, the duration of the flashes is 1/10,000 of a second or faster. That's how you freeze a hummingbird in flight and why a steady hand is not required. :)

Linda Robbins has an excellent instructional PDF on multiple flash hummingbird photography if you're interested.

[Subharghya]

This is an Unique Image .. Probably the most interesting image of a Hummer I have seen so far !! The Pose and angle of this image makes it So Wonderful .. Gr8 job :cool:

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Pretty cool perspective, I particularly like the fanned tail and only find the bright white line on the bill distracting.

[Charlie VanTassel]

Very cool, and thanks for the explanation. Some wonderful detail shown.

[Graham Smith.]

Great shot Doug!
Can't say I've every seen this angle on a hummingbird photo - very unique.

[DarrenMcKenna]

Nice Artwork presented here Doug.



darrenmckenna.com

[Kiran Poonacha]

Beautifully done Doug.. great technic.. loved the Fan tail.. would love to try this sometime, only issue is that I need to come there as we dont have Hummers here.. congrats.. TFS

[Glenda Simmons]

Great shot of this hummer's display, Doug. Would you use the same flash settings if you did NOT have a multiple flash set up, just using one, on camera, flash?

[Doug Brown]

Would you use the same flash settings if you did NOT have a multiple flash set up, just using one, on camera, flash?

Good question! I don't think that would work Glenda. The problem is that as you reduce flash power, the flash must be very close to the subject; in this case the flashes were roughly 12-18 inches from the birds.

[Stu Bowie]

The food is pretty darn good too!

And Im sure the wine goes down pretty well too. LOL. A different angle Doug, and you have captured everything one needs to see on a HB. Brilliant iridescence, love the colours, and the detail on the fanned tail takes it over the top. Congrats on an outstanding image.

[Keith Bauer]

Pretty Sweet view of the Green Breasted Mango. Great for ID purposes.

[Nagesh Mula]

It is simply a beauty Doug. Light on one side and the shadow on the other works well for me. Congrats!!

[arash_hazeghi]

Crazy shot Dough, never seen such detail on the tail. Good work with the multiple flash setup, BTW do the flashed synch well with each other and the camera for 1/10,000 sec? 580EXII I assume? Did you use any diffuser?

[Doug Brown]

I use 430EX II flashes and they sync quite well using the ST-E2 transmitter. I don't use diffusers very often.

[Daniel Belasco]

Very unusual pose. Any Hummer shot is agood by me as they are too fast!

[Arthur Morris]

Hey Doug, Well, here comes the executioner.... The tail is obviously the bomb: killer spread, sharp throughout, amazing colors and pattern and a perfect EXP.

After that it is downhill.... At f/16, you were short on d-o-f so the wings and the head are not covered. And the wings are blurred (as a result of too high a manual flash setting). The head is turned slightly to the bird's left and slightly tilted to the right, thus the head is not perfectly symmetrical. (The tail is.) Lastly, the right side of the bill and the right wing are hot; this the result of either not enough flashes or incorrectly placed flashes.

As always, I am critiquing this image as if it were my own.

ps: Thanks for the plug for Linda's guide. We are headed to Panama with a group for a combo tour on SUN coming: 1/2 high speed flash hummmers and half perched tropical species.

[Francis Bossé]

Very different Doug and I like it! Great use of the flash!

[Ákos Lumnitzer]

Awesome despite the fact that the Maestro managed to pick it apart! :D Love that fanned tail! Great work Doug!

[Lorant Voros]

Dough, this is unusual and very interesting. I agree Akos...Artie's critique is good for all of us to learn. I still love the image and I'd love if it was mine with your 5 flashes :-).

[Juan Carlos Vindas]

Doug you are so right about RN food...Kattie always takes good care of that...

And the birding there is fantastic. The other day we saw the white-crested coquette, it was a thrill...
But coming back to you image. I love the details you got here and mostly the fanned tail. The green BG needs extra NR. A great image in my opinion.

[Sinh Nhut Nguyen]

A very unique look/pose of a hummer, I love the colors, details and sharpness.

[Dominic Cantin]

All have been said ! Congrats for this capture Doug !

Dom :)

[Simon Bennett]

Excellent capture.

[Markus Jais]

I like that a lot. It may not be perfect as Artie wrote but I think this is still a terrific and very unusual image. Most photographers would not even think of trying this. You did and you got a great shot.

Markus

[Doug Brown]

You're a tough customer Artie. And you make some valid points. More DOF would have been nice; I try to use f/20 or f/22 if possible nowadays. With regard to flash power, I don't always strive for completely frozen wings. I often like a little wing blur, particularly if the bird is in a dynamic pose. The right side of the bird is obviously better lit than the left side. I was hand holding and this bird was not in the flash sweet spot at the time of image capture. Thanks for the detailed critique; it is much appreciated!

[Arthur Morris]

As tough on you as I am on me. YAW.

[sree.kumar.h]

Very interesting perspective Doug. I would be interested to know how got this perspective. The term 'Multiple flash hummingbird photography' is new to me, to understand how this image was captured. I will try reading it up.