Hummingbird photo gear questions

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The other day, photographer Francesca Albini from Mexico wrote to me with a few questions about gear for multiple-flash hummingbird photography. Francesca graciously agreed to let me post and answer her query here on the blog so that other readers might benefit from the answers as well. Below (in quotes) is Francesca’s original message to me and then my response.

Thanks, Francesca!

“Dear Greg, I’m about to build my own hummingbird photography setup and I’m on a really tight budget. One of the things that I really admire of your hummingbird photography is that you only use a few flashes when compared to other pros and I like your results a lot better! Your creativity with flash placement and settings allows for more freedom and as you say, your hummingbird photos are ever changing and much more realistic than I’ve seen elsewhere. This brings me some hope: talent and creativity are indeed more important than costly 8 flashes setups!

So first of all, thanks for sharing your work and your insight.

Now, speaking about my situation, I’d like to ask you for some advice. I’m looking to build a four flash setup (three on the bird, one on the background). I’d like to buy used 430EX (the older version) which are going for about 200 dollars or less. I am thinking of triggering them using my 580EXII mounted on the hotshoe of my camera. I’m not too sure about this though as I think the 580 always fires a preflash even when it’s set to off and I’m not sure about the impact that this light would have on the set. Maybe the ST-E2 would be a better choice as it only transmits an infrared signal? Then I could use the transmitter to trigger all the flashes, use the 580 I already have on the background and only buy three 430EX along with the ST-E2. But I’m also concerned about the ST-E2 need for a non-rechargeable, difficult to find and quite expensive battery.

I hope you can help me to take the best decision.
Thanks so much in advance!

From Chiapas, Mexico
Francesca Albini”

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Hi, Francesca, and thanks very much for your questions. Thanks also for your kind words on my hummingbird images. I’m glad you like them. To me, it’s actually not a question of being able to do good hummingbird setups with fewer flashes (I normally use from 2 to 4, once in a long while up to 5). That is, I don’t consider that I’ve been able to get good results in spite of the “limitation” of not having 8 flashes. On the contrary, I see 8 flashes as a disadvantage. With so many flashes, you are going to get an overly-flashed look and pretty flat lighting unless you are very creative with how you place the flashes. Many people use so many flashes to put lots of light on the bird in order to be able to use apertures such as f22 or f32. But I just don’t see this as a necessity. If you do a set up properly and with flowers that will attract the hummingbird, you can quite easily predict the exact plane of focus of the bird just by knowing its feeding behavior. You’ll notice that most of my images have apertures somewhere between f8 and f16, and I’ve even been having success with f4 for some images. Even if you are just shooting hummingbirds in flight as they hover near a feeder, I find that you rarely, if ever, really need the extra depth-of field that more flashes would permit you to obtain. The crowned woodnymph above, for instance, was shot at f14. (Disclosure, I caught a bit of the feeder on the left side of the image and cloned it out. This is standard procedure for many hummingbird flight images around feeders but I thought I should let you know what I did to this one! I also cloned out one catchlight from the bird’s eye.)

I use the older versions of the Canon 430 EX Speedlite myself. I bought them new when they were current but if you can find reliable used models, they will work great for you. For Nikon shooters, the Nikon SB-600 is a similarly good option. And I often use a 550 EX on the background. Though the recycling times between the larger and smaller flash should differ slightly, I’ve never run into problems.

For triggering the setup, I recommend the Canon ST-E2 transmitter over the Canon 580 EX (or 550 EX). (Note: I would give the same advice to Nikon shooters. Get the SU-800 Flash Commander for triggering multi-flash setups. It’s a great little unit, and the interface, by the way, is much better than the Canon transmitter’s.) The transmitter is much more reliable and will not give you an extra catchlight in the bird’s eye. Even if you turn the flash away as much as possible, I’ve found this to be a problem when using a master flash rather than a transmitter to trigger the other flashes. One note on the 580 firing a pre-flash, this would only apply to the best of my knowledge if you were working in TTL flash mode (or E-TTL) because this pre-flash is used to measure the proper flash output for the actual exposure. For the hummingbird setups, however, you will be working with the flashes in manual mode. So, no pre-flash.

I totally agree with you that the downside of the Canon transmitter is the strange batteries they use. They are expensive anywhere and it sounds like they’re just as hard to find in Mexico as they are in Costa Rica. By the way, the Nikon commander uses different but similarly non-standard batteries. Perhaps there is an engineering reason I don’t understand, but I really wish they would stick with AAs so that we could use rechargeable batteries for the transmitter. But this aside, my recommendation to you, Francesca, is still to go with the transmitter over the master flash to trigger your hummingbird setups.

There is a Chinese version of the Canon transmitter that I just read about yesterday. It’s basically a knockoff of the Canon version but it has three nice advantages. First, supposedly the price is about half that of the Canon. Second, it uses AA batteries! And third, you can actually swivel the transmitter while mounted in the hotshoe so that it will fire flashes behind the camera (not a big deal for hummingbird photography but for macro work this would be nice). The big question is whether or not it will really work reliably or last for a long time. I’ve heard lots of stories about cheaper third-party flashes and transmitters dying or performing inconsistently, and I’ve had this happen myself with some flashes by Sigma for Canon cameras. So, my rule with flashes and accessories of this type (where you are triggering things through the cameramaker’s own propietary infrared wireless system, not via radio frequency) is to stick with your camera brand. Nonetheless, the Chinese transmitter sure looks cool! You can check it out here: http://strobist.blogspot.com/2010/08/yongnuo-john-snow-st-e2-punches-above.html

By the way, you might also be tempted to think about other flash units that could be fired as simple optical slaves but I do not recommend this for two reasons. First, I find these to be inconsistent as they may not all fire, particularly on a sunny day where the differential between flash and bright sunlight might be too low. And second, even if the aforementioned is not a problem, flashes triggered via optical slave will go off whenever another photographer nearby uses a flash, which can create big problems.

I hope this helps, Francesca. Best of luck with your setup and, if you have further questions, please be sure to follow up by using the comments below.

Cheers,

Greg

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About the author: Like all photographers, Greg Basco loves the gear. He’s seen and shot with lots of different equipment, both Canon and Nikon. Greg is an internationally published nature photographer specializing in the Costa Rican rainforest. Check out his fine art prints, stock images, and photo tours. Contact Greg for more info on image licensing or on location photography assignments.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 18th, 2010 at 9:10 am. It is filed under Gear Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.