Pixiq

I am in Costa Rica right now conducting a photo tour to shoot hummingbirds.  It’s a thrilling endeavor, but you have to approach it with forethought and planning.  In order to freeze the movement of the wings, we set up four flash units – three on the flower or the feeder where the birds come to drink nectar – and one on the background, which is a 16 x 20 inch print of out of focus foliage.

The power of the flash units are turned down to 1/16^th power.  This makes the flash duration (the actual length of time the light inside the flash is on during the exposure) approximately 1/16,000^th of a second.  This is such a brief time that the wings of the birds are perfectly sharp. Since this is a serious reduction in light, the flash units are placed very close to the feeder – between 15 to 20 inches.

I varied my ISO from 200 to 400, depending on the lens aperture I was using.  Usually I used f/16 to f/18, and most of my shots were done with a 70-200mm lens because I was only sitting about eight feet away from the setup.

The backlit shot was done by placing two flash units behind the flower which had been soaked in nectar (four parts water to one part white sugar).  I judged the exposure by looking at the LCD monitor and then tweaking the f/stop according to what I liked. This kind of extreme backlighting is impossible to meter with either a built-in TTL meter or a hand held light meter.