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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)

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.

Recently I did a photography job at the Stony Brook Staller center.  It was my first time doing a concert — along with the limitations and restrictions that you get along with doing a live event.   With not being able to move around too much I decided to do some creative shots.  Here is the end result:

This is a combination of two separate images, one done with a relatively slow shutter speed and one done normally.

Image #1: Canon EOS 50D, 100mm f/2.8 Macro – 0.5 second @ f/32, ISO 3200, + 1/3 EV

Image #1 - Master Layer

Image #2: EOS 50D, 100mm f/2.8 Macro – 1/400th second @ f/2.8, ISO 3200, + 1/3 EV

Now, to combine the two images, we’ll take them both into photoshop. There are a million ways of doing this, but this is how I usually do it:

1. The “master” is the image that more than 50% of we’ll keep. In this case, image #1 since we’ll keep everything but the violinist.
2. Duplicate the background layer, so that we have a duplicate copy of the background in the master. This is more of a precaution so that we always have an original layer that we can go back to.
3. Click on Image #2, double click on the “Background” layer so that it turns into a regular layer. Drag the layer across to on top of Image #1.
4. I renamed the new layer “Violinist”, and attach a mask to that layer.
5. I tried to use the “Auto-Align” feature of Photoshop at this point, but it didn’t work (and I really had no hope that it worked, just wanted to see if it could).
6. So I used the eraser tool and erased as much as I could on the layer. I really should have done this with a second mask but there was absolutely no information that I wanted to keep.
7. Now that I could see the layer underneath, I reduced the opacity of the layer to 30% and moved it so it roughly matched the original layer. The parquet floor pattern was very helpful in this case. (Zoom in as much as you can, it makes life easier).
8. Increase the opacity back to 100% on the “Violinist”. Now use the mask that we attached earlier with a very soft brush and erase the outline.
9. I also added a Levels adjustment to the “Violinist” layer (clipped it in fact) so that I could lighten up the floor a bit to match the “master”. This way I didn’t have to hide all of the floor.
10. Final result is posted above.

    

    Image #2 – Violinist

Well as all know one of the most useful tools when editing is to see how much you’ve changed.  Sometimes you find it you’ve gone over the deep end on something and need to back off because whatever was, would work better.

In Lightroom, while under the “Developer” modeule (D) 2 has the (\) can be used to switch back and forth to the before and after image of your shot.  With or without any edits.

What is going on is that the image is shown as it stands, compared to the “Import” usually the initial view.   What if you had 12 changes, but only wanted to see the last 6 changes to a customer as before and after and not all of the other corrections?

The trick is to move the “before” stamp to a new spot on the history.   Select the step you want to be “before” and on the History item, right click and select “Copy History Step Settings to Before”.   Remember, that whatever history item you have selected is the “After”.  So select the next point of comparison and use the backslash key.

There are no magic bullets on getting a knife’s edge sharp picture.

Here are some steps that you need to get you 50% there, the rest you’ll have to do…

1. Use a tripod, monopod, or anything else.
   Before you even ask — YES, you need one.  The best one that you’ll actually carry with you.
   • Be it, a $450 carbon-fiber Manfrotto, or a $12 Walmart special.  Having it and using it better than having it and not using it.
   • This includes a ziplock full of rice that you can slap down and use as a bed to place your camera on, to using the side of a building to push your camera against.
   • A proper stance is the last part of this.  Left hand underneath against your chest, cradling the camera on your palm, your fingers spread out being parted by the lens.
2. Use a fast shutter speed.
   The general rule of thumb is that if you at 100mm focal length, you can hand hold up to 1/100th of a second or faster. I would not tell anyone to hand hold anything below 1/80th — as your blood pressure, heart beat, and simple act of breathing can introduce movement in the image.   This goes double for longer focal length.
3. Use good glass.
   You have to do your research before buying your glass.  Almost all main lens manufacturers have your “regular” or “consumer” lenses, and also a “professional” series.  The main difference is the construction and optics that are used in the lens.  Canon has the “L” series, Sigma has the “EX” series,  Tamron well they don’t but they claim all of their lenses are professional.
4. Use the proper depth of field — good focus
   A whole lot of images are in fact very sharp — you just don’t like where the sharpness is.  This is because of poor focus, because the subject moved, you moved or you just mis-focus.  This plus, a small depth of field puts all or some of your subject out of focus, and not very sharp.  Using manual focus is obviously idle, if possible.  Using a larger depth of field (smaller aperture) would also help.  If you camera has a “auto-keep-focus” such as the Canon AI Servo that will lock and keep focus will also help if the subject is moving.
5. Use a short focal length
   Now this one is my personal note, I think most people try to zoom too much.  Most your feet and get closer to your subject and fill the frame.   Use the shortest focal length you have (without going into the wide range [< 50mm]).
6. Proper post-processing
   Unlike film, almost all digital images need some post processing.  Specially USM (UnSharpen mark) — opposite to it’s name it’s actually a tool that sharpens your images.  It is not a tool to sharpen a blurry image, but if you have done everything else this last step will give you that extra pop of sharpness.

As always, there are dozen different answers to every question, but I am hoping that these small points help someone get a sharper image.

Well I must have slipped or something because I totally over exposed this poor Dahlia.

As you can see I was holding the flash way too close on the bottom and totally overexposed the bottom of the flower.  Well there is a an easy way to save  this image.

If you don’t already know I’m a very big proponent of Lightroom.  It has made my life so much easier.  I can find sports images in seconds with the nice keyword searches, and I hardly ever go into Photoshop anymore.  If I do, I’m there for 30minutes to a day because what I need to do is usually a huge task.  The rest of the work is all done in LR.

This image can be saved in a matter of seconds.

First we need to identify the tool that we would like to use.  As the overexposure happened from a side, this means we need to reduce the exposure of the bottom without changing the exposure on top.  So the gradient (moving from one color to another) negative exposure is what we need.

First, lets switch to the Developer Module by either clicking “Develop” on the top row, or by hitting “D”.   The gradient tool is a right below the Histogram on the right side of the developer module, and it looks like a box with 3 dotted lines going through it.   The 4th option from the left, and 2nd option from the right.   You can see it below circled.

Now choose “Exposure” from the drop down list in front of Effect.  Next move the slider all the way left so that it reads -4.00.  That’s right we’re going to way underexpose the image so that we can see where the gradient will start and end.  Afterward we will pull the exposure back up and we’ll end up where we want.

Now click on where the image is “most” over exposed, and while holding the left mouse down drag the mouse towards where the exposure is correct.  You should be able to see the exposure change as you’re doing this, if your computer is a little slow, just hold the mouse steady without letting go of the button and LR will catch up. When you’re happy with the size of the gradient let go of the mouse, but don’t click anywhere on the picture, if you do you’ll start a new gradient.  If this should happen, click “Cancel” on the bottom right hand corner of the tool window.  You can grab the old gradient to change it’s value by clicking the little white dot (handler) that is on the image.

As you can see we have underexposed the flower on the bottom now, but we can also see exactly where the gradient starts.  If you know exactly how much exposure you need than you can set it from the start, but me, I can’t tell from the image how badly I’ve done something so I usually just go over and reduce as needed.

Now let’s increase the exposure until the bottom and the top matches.

As you can see we now have a properly exposure flower, ready to be matted and framed for the gallery or show.

Also, please notice that the history on the left shows us all of the steps that we completed.  At this point I usually take a “snapshot” of the history point so that I can break this off and/or continue to play with the image to see if anything else can be changed to make it better.  In this case I might run it through Noise Ninja once at a low setting.

Final export: