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I wrote this for a meetup group, thought I would post it for everyone.  I’m hoping someone can get something out of it.

Please remember this is just my recommendations. This is the stuff that has or has not worked for me in the past. There is a better than good chance that you walk away with no photographs of a hummingbird. That’s just the way wildlife photography is. Out of maybe 1500 attempted bird shots (2126 frames, which I imagine about 500 are nature and macro shots) that I’ve shot at the sanctuary, I can honestly say I kept about 100 of them, and only like 6 of them. Only one has ever been sold or won anything. So keep all that in mind.

Why the hardware limitations, and what they mean:
Let me explain what has worked best for me:
I’ve tried it every which way, I even tried hand holding a 200mm f/2 lens once. That was not a fun day

You setup your camera on your tripod, and setup your exposure, white balance, lock in your aperture and shutter speed, you prefocus your lens and basically setup on a particular flower.

Now you sit there, and wait somewhat quietly AND WITHOUT ANYONE moving around, with your remote control in hand. Sooner or later the hummingbird comes to the feeder and when the feeder is not there they go for the most available flower. You click away until the bird leaves.

Why the distance:
Hummingbirds are extremely skittish and fast as lightning. What we have to do is NOT be a danger to them.

• Movement is danger. That’s why you don’t want to swing your lens around from flower to flower.
• If you’re too close you’re a danger. That’s why we’re going to sit far away.

Why the limitations on the short lenses:
These birds are small, inches as a mater of fact. If you’re 10 feet away, and you’re trying to photograph a bird that’s 2.5″ long and moving like greased lighting you need something at least in the vicinity of filling a 1/5th of the frame up with that bird to even get a chance of a decent picture. To give you an idea. Put two DD batteries on top of each other (AA will do in a pinch :-) ). Now go stand 10 feet back. Now try to compose a shot with a 200mm lens. That’s what you’re shooting.

You should actually bring a macro lens and a wide angel lens with you, just in case the birds don’t show up. That’s what is left to shoot there if no birds come.

Back to the suggestions:

WITH OUT flash:
1) Lens, focus on the flower you are setting up at, change your lens’ focus to “Manual Focus”. LOCK down your tripod.
2) White balance, (or just shoot RAW). The side of the 2nd building is pretty close to white, you can use that as your base.
3) Av, or Manual mode
4) F/Stop — f/11 (f/7.1 works as well) is a good starting point. == Why @ 9 feet a 300mm on a crop body at f/11 gives you Depth of field of 1″. Which is 0.5 inches in the back and 0.5 inches in the front of your subject.
5) In Manual — go for Shutter Speed, the maximum you can do. If you’re shooting RAW you can under expose by 1 stop and still bring it back with a little noise. When in doubt go for higher speed to freeze the bird. Don’t even imagine that you’ll freeze the wings this way. You won’t. Not even at 1/8000th.
6) If you have high speed drive, switch to it. You want the camera to take as many shots as it can as you press down on the remote.

WITH flash:
1) Lens, focus on the flower you are setting up at, change your lens’ focus to “Manual Focus”. LOCK down your tripod.
2) White balance, (or just shoot RAW). The side of the 2nd building is pretty close to white, you can use that as your base.
3) Manual Mode on the Camera
4) F/Stop — Start out @ f/7.1 and take a test shot after all of the setup is done and close down until you have a good histogram.
5) Shutter Speed – doesn’t really matter, but if it’s a nice day out go to your maximum sync speed. This is usually 1/200th or 1/250th. This will reduce the sun’s output as much as it can.
6) For the flash power, if you use the flash go to 1/4th power. If you use the camera, start off at -1 1/3 FEC. You want a tiny little flash to go off to freeze the bird that’s it. Increase/decrease based on the output of the histogram and the amount of light from the sun. The more sun is present, the more power you need to freeze the bird. Why? HIGHER POWER = slower recharge time. The slower you can shoot. Last thing you want is your flash to shutdown from the heat.
7) If you have a better beamer, use it. This is exactly the scenario it was designed for. Remember that you have to be using a 300mm or longer lens for it to work.

I’m not going to go into detail on why the Better Beamer is a good choice here, but you can do a search on the web and see thousands of articles on it.

I’ll be happy to answer any questions, on anything above or any other questions you may have.

P.S. FEC = Flash Exposure Compensation, EV = Camera Meter Exposure Compensation (two different things)

A couple of quick images from Avalon Preserve

From their website: Sweetbriar Nature Center is a private not-for-profit corporation which exists to provide natural science education services for Long Island residents of all ages and to engage in native wildlife rehabilitation services. Through education and examples, ECSS encourages responsible decision making, appreciation, and respect for the unique wildlife and ecosystems found on Long Island.

The butterfly room does have an additional charge of $3 for viewing/photography and if you like to use a tripod: $10.

Had a fantastic day shooting at the Planting Fields Arboretum.   Made some new friends.  The arbortum also had a Rose Show, sadly a lot of the roses were not prestine, although I did a lot of shots, not sure if most are keepers.

Some fantastic pieces of art.

I was invited along to go on one of the East End Lighthouses Organization tours.  The tour was set to begin early 9 am out of the Orient Point docks, from the eastern most point on the north fork of Long Island.  It started out as a gloomy day and we had a quick 5 minute shower right before I got to the docks but it turned into absolutely a great day.   Now the weather obviously cooperated but what really make the day was the staff.  The East End Lighthouse staff did a great job, they also brought in the best staff for both the food and the ship.   I believe Cross Island Ferry company which I give you generously as a patron for my trips to Connecticut donated the boat, the food was also fantastic and plentiful.

Back to the trip.  The ride was taken to almost all of the lighthouses around the east end of Long Island.  They were great, good stories and lot of facts about each lighthouse.  If you ever do the trip pay attention though because there was an actual quiz at the end.

Long Beach Bar Lighthouse

Orient Point Lighthouse

Plum Island Lighthouse

Little Gul Ligthhouse

Race Rock Lighthouse

North Dumpling Ligthouse

Latimer Reef Ligthouse

New London Ledge Lighthouse

Five Mile Point (New Haven) Light

Gardiners Bay Location (lighthouse no more)

What is the flash sync speed?

The way the camera actually operates when doing an exposure is by pulling two curtains across the sensor. This is how an exposure is done in modern SLRs cameras. When the shutter opens the first curtain is pulled across, followed by the second curtain at the speed of the “Shutter”. At “sync” speed, the second curtain follows the first curtain exactly when the entire sensor is open. If your shutter is faster than your cameras sync speed, let’s say 1/500^th. The second curtain has started to close when the flash goes off. This usually results in some portion of the image being darker than it should be.

A quick example, let’s assume that the camera’s sync speed is 1/250^th. If you set your shutter speed to 1/60^th, the first curtain fully opens, 1/60^th of a second later the second curtain follows so that the entire sensor is fully exposed for 1/60^th of a second. Now let’s assume that you set your shutter speed to 1/8000^th. The first curtain opens, as soon as it does the second curtain starts to close as well since it to be able to keep the exposure on the sensor to 1/8000^th of a second. That means only a small sliver of the sensor is exposed at any point in time. If there was a “fast” bright source (like a flash) that was introduced only several small slivers portions of the sensor would record that light.

To summarize, the sync speed of any SLR is the fastest speed at which the entire sensor is exposed before the second curtain starts to close.

Most consumer DSLRs have a sync speed of 1/200^th, most professional cameras have a sync speed of 1/250^th or higher. Some of the really good exceptions are the original Canon 1D bodies which had a 1/500^th sync speed which is unheard of now days.

At times I want a color in Photoshop to match something else on my desktop.

An example:

In Lightroom 3 you can use a graphical identity place in place of the Adobe one.  But I wanted the gray of the lightroom to match my logo.

Yes, you can take a screen shot and cut-n-paste it into an image, than use the color picker to pick the image, but there is a much more accurate and fast way — although in Mac world this is automatically done you can do the same thing in window.

1. Open the application that the color you need, if you can move it to the left or right side of the image.
2. Open Photoshop, now exit the maximize view (The button next to the “X” on the top right).  It’s a window in window mode, denoting maximized window.  If you press this and nothing seems to happen (but the icon changes to a single window), you window is no longer maximized but it’s still set to the maximum size of the screen.   Just move your moues to the corner and you should get a handle.
3. Either have a image open, or just create an empty file.
4. Reduce the size of the Photoshop window so that the color in question is visible under your Photoshop window.
5. Click inside of the Image or file that you created (don’t let go of the button).
6. Drag the Eye Dropper in Photoshop, as you do the color will change in the color selection and your eye dropper remains working even if you move outside of the Photoshop window so you can pickup the color of the other application.

Kent Falls, was another meetup with the Suffolk Long Island Photographers group. Although I had a great day, I have to admit that for waterfalls aficionado’s the falls is facing a bad direction. At least end of winter/beginning of fall time frame. The falls direction makes it so that 50% of fall is cover in shadow all day long. I have to make another trip end of Summer/Fall time frame to see how much the seasonal change of the angle of the sun has changed that.

There is a ton of places to take photos and for those unable to walk too far, the falls is barely 200 feet from the parking lot. With a long enough lens you don’t even have to get out of the car.

Kent, CT – not to be confused with Kent, NY is a great little town with a lot of character as well. The local chocolate shop had some great mixes that we availed ourselves to as well.

Equipment used: 1Ds Mark II, EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS, EF 24-105mm f/4L IS, Sigma 14mm f/2.8, 2 * 3Stop ND filters (77mm) to stop the light and get some great flowing water shots at 1-30s (as the sun came up the times went down dramatically).

What is a Neutral Density filters?

• Like Graduated Neutral Density filters are used to reduce the amount of light hitting the sensor.

Why would someone want to reduce the light hitting the sensor?

• By reducing the amount of light hitting the sensor you can increase your shutter speed.   This allows you to do relatively long exposures without having to do so very early or very late into the night.
• A by product of long exposure is that by increasing the shutter speed you also get a little bit more of color and contrast into your image.  Longer exposure shots will contain more detail in the colors than if you had shot them properly.

An example? The same exact shot within minutes of each other:

• With 6 stops of light (2 – 3 stop ND filters): 30″ exposure @ f/22, ISO 50 — the water turns into a milky liquid, shows motion, turns the image into a dream like state.   It’s something different.
• Without any filter: 1/20th @ f/22, ISO 50. freezes just about all of the water, some movement visible although you have to look for it.   IMHO, boring!