Looking For Nectar
I spent an enjoyable time a few days ago practicing a new technique that I learned for photographing hummingbird. Even if the pictures hadn't turned out well, it would have been fun, as these little birds are a lot of fun to watch.
I learned the lighting from a book by Linda Robbins called The Hummingbird Guide. Her method is to use a minimum 0f 5 to 6 strobes, a supplied background, and photograph the birds in the shade so that you don't have to overpower the sunlight. When you use multiple strobes on a subject in the shade you can use lower power settings for each flash which results in shorter flash durations which means it freezes the wing blur. I used 6 Yongnuo strobes because I wanted to use identical manual power output for each flash . One strobe was pointed at the background, one was underneath the feeder, and the other 4 strobes surrounded the feeder. The strobes were all at under 1/32nd power, in manual mode, and were triggered by a Yongnuo RF-603N., and you can see the EXIF info on the side. This method is the only way that I've been able to photograph one of these birds with little, or no, wing blur. Down below in the first comment, you can see a picture of the setup that I used.
I've taken quite a few pictures of hummers over the years and put them an album creatively called Hummingbirds.
Looking For Nectar
I spent an enjoyable time a few days ago practicing a new technique that I learned for photographing hummingbird. Even if the pictures hadn't turned out well, it would have been fun, as these little birds are a lot of fun to watch.
I learned the lighting from a book by Linda Robbins called The Hummingbird Guide. Her method is to use a minimum 0f 5 to 6 strobes, a supplied background, and photograph the birds in the shade so that you don't have to overpower the sunlight. When you use multiple strobes on a subject in the shade you can use lower power settings for each flash which results in shorter flash durations which means it freezes the wing blur. I used 6 Yongnuo strobes because I wanted to use identical manual power output for each flash . One strobe was pointed at the background, one was underneath the feeder, and the other 4 strobes surrounded the feeder. The strobes were all at under 1/32nd power, in manual mode, and were triggered by a Yongnuo RF-603N., and you can see the EXIF info on the side. This method is the only way that I've been able to photograph one of these birds with little, or no, wing blur. Down below in the first comment, you can see a picture of the setup that I used.
I've taken quite a few pictures of hummers over the years and put them an album creatively called Hummingbirds.