There's a particular dead sumac on which hummingbirds like to perch about 12-15 feet up. This is the only exposed perch I've seen them on (they have a favored perch up under the canopy of a live oak...but there's too much stuff in the way, and it's too dark, and all I'd get a picture of is the underside.)
Thanks to cactus and other inconvenient vegetation, there are only a few angles from which I can set up to take the hummers, and all of them involve shooting upward at the sky from a distance at which the hummer is always small and the sky is always big and bright...it's their preferred midday perch. I had hoped that adding the teleconverter to my 300mm would do the trick, but it's not enough (and I can't afford a new lens at the moment or for many moments to come.)
I have a lot of really sharp silhouettes of hummers. Sometimes even doing interesting things like wiping their beaks or grooming. I can lighten them to extreme amounts, enough to be sure which species it is, but then they look all grainy and grayed out.
So far I haven't found a solution to the "small dark subject, large bright background" problem. It's frustrating because for several hours a day I can count on seeing a hummer in that location within a minute or two...and yet I can't seem to get anything but the silhouette of him. I'm sure there *is* a way...but what is it?
A good flash and a Better Beamer should make a big difference. You may also be able to rent a long lens for a day somewhere.
Guy
Posted by Robert Helms on April 1, 2006 at 6:37 PM
Elizabeth, the flash adivce will make a difference and so will the Better Beamer.I think one would have to have a very fine degree spot meter or a long enough lens to fill the frame up more with the hummers to get a good exposure without the help from a flash
I try to capture them around here in the summer time and I coveniently place a feeder around lush green backgrounds that are several feet away so I can get a good out of focus background,but I also place it in close proximity to a walnut tree. This is not where the hummers nest,but they seem to be very agressive when other hummers come to the feeders.What a lot of them do is perch really close to the feeder and less than 8 feet from the ground making perching shots a little more easier.
Hummingbirds are very hard to capture. I would just place a feeder close to a place they can perch that offers you a better background. A lot of the Hummingbird images one views in magazines or on the internet are done by a set up of some sort and almost always with at least one flash and sometimes 2 or more flashes.
Thanks, folks. I appreciate your time and advice. I suspect that if I want hummer pictures, I'd better try getting thenm in the yard, not out on the land, though.
(And, with all respect, Robert, I burst out laughing at your "lush green backgrounds"...we almost never have lush green backgrounds...except for the water iris in the lily pond...which requires additional water every few days...or in a good year, for about two weeks in the spring. <G>)
I live in one of the driest places on the planet. It certainly is possible by situating feeders in a convenient place to get hummers to perch lower, and get pleasing neutral green or brown backgrounds by using bushes in your landscaping as an OOF background. Take a look at my Costa's Hummingbird page in which virtually all the images were taken in my yard.
You might study the Art Morris books, The Art of Bird Photography (in soft cover) and The Art of Bird Photography II (almost 800 pages on a CD). These books cover EVERYTHING you may wish to know about how to take bird photos. You can get the first book from Amazon and the second from his website, just do a Google search to find it. The CD also covers topics such as setting up your yard to attract and photograph birds.
Posted by Robert Helms on April 2, 2006 at 8:18 PM
Elizabeth,
I'm glad you got a good laugh,but I was describing what I do when mentioning the lush green. My advice to you was to place a feeder in an area that gave you a better background,not lush green. Why don't you just make a background that is green and toss in a little brown for realism? I've seen this done before as well, and please don't laugh
Hi Elizabeth
Sounds like you might try practicing a little with some pretty significant overexposures. If you look at the Anna's hummingbird I posted recently you'll see that I overexposed 1 1/3 stops and used fill flash. Without the flash I would probably have opened up another 1/3 to 2/3 stops. The effect of this is to get the exposure on the chest and gorget right while letting the sky exposure fall where it may. Although it seems counter-intuitive this should help without mandating more expensive equipment.
The other factor that will come into play will be which metering pattern you use. With matrix metering (evaluative on my Canon gear) you need to guess what algorithms the camera designers included to get to the "right" exposure. If you use center-weighted averaging or spot metering then you can compensate to make the metered area look the way you want rather than the 18% grey the meters are set to. As I believe you're using digital these experiments are pretty straightforward (you don't even need a bird on the perch) for you to test to get reasonably accurate exposures.
Discussion
11 repliesThanks to cactus and other inconvenient vegetation, there are only a few angles from which I can set up to take the hummers, and all of them involve shooting upward at the sky from a distance at which the hummer is always small and the sky is always big and bright...it's their preferred midday perch. I had hoped that adding the teleconverter to my 300mm would do the trick, but it's not enough (and I can't afford a new lens at the moment or for many moments to come.)
I have a lot of really sharp silhouettes of hummers. Sometimes even doing interesting things like wiping their beaks or grooming. I can lighten them to extreme amounts, enough to be sure which species it is, but then they look all grainy and grayed out.
So far I haven't found a solution to the "small dark subject, large bright background" problem. It's frustrating because for several hours a day I can count on seeing a hummer in that location within a minute or two...and yet I can't seem to get anything but the silhouette of him. I'm sure there *is* a way...but what is it?
Elizabeth Moon
Texas
That will do everything you need.
Guy
I try to capture them around here in the summer time and I coveniently place a feeder around lush green backgrounds that are several feet away so I can get a good out of focus background,but I also place it in close proximity to a walnut tree. This is not where the hummers nest,but they seem to be very agressive when other hummers come to the feeders.What a lot of them do is perch really close to the feeder and less than 8 feet from the ground making perching shots a little more easier.
Hummingbirds are very hard to capture. I would just place a feeder close to a place they can perch that offers you a better background. A lot of the Hummingbird images one views in magazines or on the internet are done by a set up of some sort and almost always with at least one flash and sometimes 2 or more flashes.
Good luck.
(And, with all respect, Robert, I burst out laughing at your "lush green backgrounds"...we almost never have lush green backgrounds...except for the water iris in the lily pond...which requires additional water every few days...or in a good year, for about two weeks in the spring. <G>)
Elizabeth
I live in one of the driest places on the planet. It certainly is possible by situating feeders in a convenient place to get hummers to perch lower, and get pleasing neutral green or brown backgrounds by using bushes in your landscaping as an OOF background. Take a look at my Costa's Hummingbird page in which virtually all the images were taken in my yard.
I'm glad you got a good laugh,but I was describing what I do when mentioning the lush green. My advice to you was to place a feeder in an area that gave you a better background,not lush green. Why don't you just make a background that is green and toss in a little brown for realism? I've seen this done before as well, and please don't laugh
I do appreciate your advice, and will keep it in mind.
Elizabeth
Can't afford any more equipment for now, so it'll have to go on the wish-list for later.
Elizabeth
Sounds like you might try practicing a little with some pretty significant overexposures. If you look at the Anna's hummingbird I posted recently you'll see that I overexposed 1 1/3 stops and used fill flash. Without the flash I would probably have opened up another 1/3 to 2/3 stops. The effect of this is to get the exposure on the chest and gorget right while letting the sky exposure fall where it may. Although it seems counter-intuitive this should help without mandating more expensive equipment.
The other factor that will come into play will be which metering pattern you use. With matrix metering (evaluative on my Canon gear) you need to guess what algorithms the camera designers included to get to the "right" exposure. If you use center-weighted averaging or spot metering then you can compensate to make the metered area look the way you want rather than the 18% grey the meters are set to. As I believe you're using digital these experiments are pretty straightforward (you don't even need a bird on the perch) for you to test to get reasonably accurate exposures.
Hope this helps