Hummingbirds with OM 350mm f2.8 + Om 1.4TC

Gary Blake said:

Raj

Thanks for looking and commenting.

Glad you liked the photos.

Set up details:
The concept:

I have a very nice photograph of a dragonfly in bright sunlight with an almost black background which was the dark surface of the water in the deep shade.



I thought it would be nice to try and engineer the same type of lighting with the hummingbirds
.

Analyzed my home environment and set up a hummingbird feeder near a door where the rising sun is almost directly behind the feeder. Also aligned the feeder with a row of cedar trees (dark green) which are in the morning shade. The dark green gets very dark. This is my background.

Used a bent neck drop style feeder so the birds have to feed on the fly.

Cut a dead thorn bush and secured this next to the feeder to try and entice the birds to roost after feeding. Made sure I had some of the same alignment with the sun and dark background with a few higher branches for slightly different background looks depending where they might land.

The house is light blue vinyl siding so it is a natural reflector about 10 feet away from the feeder and the roost.

Camera mounted on a sturdy tripod and yes, prefocused usually on the feeder.

For the directly backlit shots I use A priority and dial in between -1.7 and -2.7EV (depending on how bright the backlighting is) to preserve the highlights. This turns the dark green background to near black.

Tried shooting through the glass first – not bad results at first glance, loses very little sharpness but horrible colour shifts in all directions when looked at more closely in photoshop. (no optical coatings on window glass

Made a temporary door with a cutout for the lens and that solved that problem.

Hung a camouflage sheet over the front of the lens draping down to conceal my hand movements when focusing.

Finally, dampened the shutter sound with a couple of layers of towels over top of the mirror box. The E3 is quite a bit louder than the E1, still not bad but more than enough to startle them in the early morning quiet.

Lastly, sit and wait for the right light and hope the little ones will face the right direction and smile

Gary

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Gary Blake said:

Raj,

The feeder set up is pretty simple really:



Here you can see the feeder bottle, this is quite small, holds only 1/4 cup, the feeder neck is just over 1/4" OD.

My thornbush is lashed to the deck railing just left of the feeder but out of the picture.

You can see the line of trees in the background. this provides the nice background which ranges from near black in the early morning to light green when the late afternoon sun is lighting it up.

With this type of feeder you can get the flight shots with the feeder out of the frame most of the time, or just a bit of the glass feeder tube which is usually pretty easy to edit out.

From 10 feet away the framed area is pretty small.

Here's one that is not cropped:



Gary

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