There are several species of hummingbirds in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona, and because it's so hot here they are attracted to feeders and flowers with nectar for hydration and nourishment. The most beautiful is the male broad-billed hummingbird with cyan and green iridescent colors on its chest. I captured this image with a 4-flash setup in which the power of the flash units was decreased to 1/16th power. This made the flash duration (the actual amount of time the flash tube is illuminated) about 1/16,000th of a second. This is fast enough to freeze even the beating of the wings. I used a shutter speed of 1/250 -- the sync speed -- and an f/stop of 22 for as much depth of field as possible. My ISO was 640. I shot this with a 100-400mm Canon lens with a 1.4x teleconverter and one extension tube. The latter allowed the lens to focus closer than the minimum focusing distance. I balanced the exposure with the ambient light so the tree in the background was exposed correctly.
0 Comments