Mimosa Hummers
5/18/2005


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Technical Stuff

    These photographs were taken as an experiment in preparation for my upcoming trip to Nicaragua. Basically, I wanted to see if I could get reasonably good images of hummingbirds with on-camera flash. The problem that I have is that I have a very good 400mm lens (Canon EF 400 5.6L) but it does not have image stabilization. So it is very easy to get a lot of motion blur if used at its 1/200 sec flash sync setting. My solution was to take photos of hummers in direct sunlight. This too has its problems because in order to acceptably minimize camera shake blur, you need 1/1600 or faster shutter speed (or at least I do, even with a monopod). Additionally Canon 10D needs to be set at 400 ISO or lower to minimize noise. So I set my camera at 1/1600 shutter speed, f/8 to get a little depth of field, 400 ISO and set my 550ex flash to High Speed Sync. To help the flash output, I used a Better Beamer. In this setting, the Better Beamer was the key. Most of these shots are within 25 feet of the camera. I still like the detail I get in the birds using the flash setup, but these results have made me feel OK about not trying to fly with a duffel bag full of lightstands, flash heads and softboxes.