[vsmouli]

Another thing you could do is place the flash fairly close to the bird feeder or where ever you intend to photograph him. You'll want the flash at either 1/32 or 1/64th power in order to have a short enough flash duration. Set your camera to 1/180 and then set a small aperture like f/16. Take a test shot, put something in place of the humming bird and see if you have enough power in the flash to illuminate your "stand-in" Since the hummingbird will only be properly exposed for a split second, the flash duration will essentially become the shutter speed, and it will be faster than anything your camera can achieve.

maxfield_photo, thanks for the response. Could you tell me how to set the flash at 1/32 or 1/64? When I turn it on, I see P-TTL 4-Ch 1/1 Master. What should be the sync setting? Sorry if I seem to sound dumb...

Thanks

Mouli

[maxfield_photo]

I don't own the AF540, but I think you hit the mode button several times until the screen shows 'M' for manual, and then just dial the power down. Basically this is trial and error, if you have a gray card or a light meter you can find the distance that yields proper exposure at 1/32 or 1/64, then just set the flash up that far away from the feeder or flower or wherever you plan to photograph your bird. If you don't have a gray card, go buy one, it's the best 5 bucks you'll ever spend on a piece of photographic gear.

[vsmouli]

I don't own the AF540, but I think you hit the mode button several times until the screen shows 'M' for manual, and then just dial the power down. Basically this is trial and error, if you have a gray card or a light meter you can find the distance that yields proper exposure at 1/32 or 1/64, then just set the flash up that far away from the feeder or flower or wherever you plan to photograph your bird. If you don't have a gray card, go buy one, it's the best 5 bucks you'll ever spend in the on a piece of photographic gear.

Thankyou very much. I will update you with my picture after playing around with the flash settings.

[baro-nite]

Yep, M mode (mode button), zoom in (zoom button), then for power setting hit the S button and use the dial that surrounds the button. Unless you are using wireless mode, I suggest disabling the auto-power-off function, because when the unit powers down and you turn it on again, you're back to default settings (check the manual for how to disable this, page 17).

[vsmouli]

Yep, M mode (mode button), zoom in (zoom button), then for power setting hit the S button and use the dial that surrounds the button. Unless you are using wireless mode, I suggest disabling the auto-power-off function, because when the unit powers down and you turn it on again, you're back to default settings (check the manual for how to disable this, page 17).

Thanks baro-nite.

[Lowell Goudge]

just to put some numbers to this, according to wikipedia (best source of data there is) hummingbirds flap their wings between 20 and 80 times per second (depending on species and size) lets make this 100 per second to roudn things off.

that means one complete cycle, down up down (or the opposite) is done in 1/100 of a second.

spmeone asked early on, what do you consider "frozen" so lets think about that a little
- the bird has about a 4 (100mm) inch sweep top to bottom (actually in an arc but any way) so it is moving its wings in the order of 2000mm/second (note it goes up and down therefore 2 x the distance in one beat)
- now consider that "frozen" means smaller than perceivable movement. there is a definition for that, basically the same as "acceptably sharp" when discussing DOF, i.e. a point is blurred to no more than 20 microns on the sensor (the CofC)
- if the bird fills the frame, at about 100mm in real size = either 16 or 24mm (sensor size) then we have a reproduction ratio of between 1/4 and 1/6.
- consider that 6 x 20 microns is 120 microns or.12mm, then the duration of the flash to have the wing movement "frozen" needs to be .12mm or less.
- if the wing is moving at 2000mm / second, we need a flash duration of 1/17000 or about 56uS

this is awfully short, hence why people tell you to get the flash and camera as close to the bird as possible,

I don't know the duration of the AF540FGZ, that is on my to do list, but my old sunpak AutoZoom 2000 I did measure at about 20 uS at minimum power.

[maxfield_photo]

I don't know the duration of the AF540FGZ, that is on my to do list, but my old sunpak AutoZoom 2000 I did measure at about 20 uS at minimum power.

You can cross that off your to-do list

Pentax AF540FGZ flash

[alamo5000]

[alamo5000]

Freezing the wings will be hard with a flash. I would suggest shooting in brighter natural light, possibly putting your bird feeder in an area where there is more natural lighting.

The above shot was shot at ISO 1600 and 1/1600 of a second, f 4.5 and done in the shade. To really freeze the wings you will need a much faster shutter speed like 1/4000 shutter speed... please note that if you shoot wide open (I was using a 200mm lens) the DOF will make the capture much more difficult. DOF matters a lot as does having very accurate focusing point. The bigger the fstop number the more forgiving but the slower the shutter speed...solution is more light.

You might have the camera set to be able to 'freeze' something but getting it 'in focus' is the challenge. Hummingbirds like to zip around a lot.

I would put the feeder under a tree or something where the sun can directly hit it when the sun is shining down at at an angle in the mid to later evening...whether you do that at mid day or in the evening is up to your experimenation. Direct light will be best. Shade (as in my shot above) complicates things a lot.

Also on a side note manual focusing seemed to work a lot better for me. I focused on a spot and anticipated where the bird would be...yes, I did it old school.

[Lowell Goudge]

Freezing the wings will be hard with a flash. I would suggest shooting in brighter natural light, possibly putting your bird feeder in an area where there is more natural lighting.

The above shot was shot at ISO 1600 and 1/1600 of a second, f 4.5 and done in the shade. To really freeze the wings you will need a much faster shutter speed like 1/4000 shutter speed... please note that if you shoot wide open (I was using a 200mm lens) the DOF will make the capture much more difficult. DOF matters a lot as does having very accurate focusing point. The bigger the fstop number the more forgiving but the slower the shutter speed...solution is more light.

You might have the camera set to be able to 'freeze' something but getting it 'in focus' is the challenge. Hummingbirds like to zip around a lot.

I would put the feeder under a tree or something where the sun can directly hit it when the sun is shining down at at an angle in the mid to later evening...whether you do that at mid day or in the evening is up to your experimenation. Direct light will be best. Shade (as in my shot above) complicates things a lot.

Also on a side note manual focusing seemed to work a lot better for me. I focused on a spot and anticipated where the bird would be...yes, I did it old school.

no offence intended but I think you have missed the salient point of the discussion. I do not disagree that a very high speed exposure is needed, but 1/4000 just won't cut it. go back to my rough calculation 1/4000 is 250 uS, 5 times slower than the exposure calculated to produce a blur that is smaller than the circle of confusion for a point.

There have been many discussions and posts over the years and they all tend towards one direction. Forget natural light unless you have a shutter that can go at 1/20,000 or better (and there are some of those out there which people use). the simplest way is to use the minimum power of a flash which can be faster than the 50uS minimum required to freeze motion, and a short focal length at close range. so that you can stop down and still get the exposure at minimum flash power.

[elliott]

Notice that the first example on this thread by baro-nite was done at 1/180 shutter speed, the flash sync speed, and it is much, much clearer than the shot at 1/1600.

This is one reason why I don't understand the argument that says we need more than 1/180 to freeze motion, as if the small jump to 1/250 found in a Nikon D800 would do much better in this situation.

[Nass]

no offence intended but I think you have missed the salient point of the discussion. I do not disagree that a very high speed exposure is needed, but 1/4000 just won't cut it. go back to my rough calculation 1/4000 is 250 uS, 5 times slower than the exposure calculated to produce a blur that is smaller than the circle of confusion for a point.

There have been many discussions and posts over the years and they all tend towards one direction. Forget natural light unless you have a shutter that can go at 1/20,000 or better (and there are some of those out there which people use). the simplest way is to use the minimum power of a flash which can be faster than the 50uS minimum required to freeze motion, and a short focal length at close range. so that you can stop down and still get the exposure at minimum flash power.

I concur. Low power flash duration is far, far, far faster than the fastest of shutter speed. So use the light from that, and don't worry about some 1/180 limitation, it's irrellevant really if you know what you're doing in manual mode. Heck you can even set it on manual on 1/90, let the background seep through (nice bokeh and all that) but use the flash to freeze the foreground, the hummingbird. Easy peasy.

Fwiw, this is why I'll bore anyone to death with my whining about the 540 if they care to listen. Because for the very best of such type shots you also want to eliminate flash ghosting, which to cut a long story short, requires rear sync. And Pentax 540s can't freaking do manual + rear sync together. But Metz 58-11 can. So guess what I'm using.

[maxfield_photo]

This is one reason why I don't understand the argument that says we need more than 1/180 to freeze motion, as if the small jump to 1/250 found in a Nikon D800 would do much better in this situation.

Some folks argue for faster sync speed without understanding the real reason to want it. The purpose is not to freeze motion, but to be able to tip the balance toward the strobe when balancing flash and ambient light. Unlike most other things in photography, there is no trade-off, no disadvantage to having a faster sync speed. However, when attempting to freeze motion, it is usually beneficial for the subject to be at lease three stops underexposed by the ambient exposure. A faster sync speed allow the photographer to accomplish this without having to resort to stopping down which adversely affects the power of the flash. It's all a balancing act.

[elliott]

Some folks argue for faster sync speed without understanding the real reason to want it. The purpose is not to freeze motion, but to be able to tip the balance toward the strobe when balancing flash and ambient light.

I fully understand the part of wanting it for balancing ambient light. I wouldn't mind having an extra stop or two, but the difference between 1/180 and 1/250 is only half a stop, not exactly a night and day difference.

[maxfield_photo]

I concur. Low power flash duration is far, far, far faster than the fastest of shutter speed. So use the light from that, and don't worry about some 1/180 limitation, it's irrellevant really if you know what you're doing in manual mode. Heck you can even set it on manual on 1/90, let the background seep through (nice bokeh and all that) but use the flash to freeze the foreground, the hummingbird. Easy peasy.

This works great for hummingbirds, but what about freezing a wave crashing around a model on a beach? The reason it works for the hummingbird is the flash-to-subject distance can be kept very small, therefore the power can be kept low and the flash duration short. And even an undiffused flash is relatively large in relation to the size of the bird therefore you get relatively soft light.

Point that same light at a person, and it's going to be small and harsh no matter how close you get it. Put it further away and you'll have to increases the power considerably thanks to our old nemesis the inverse square law, which will in turn cause the flash duration to increase. A faster sync speed solves this problem, or at least helps to solve it.