Well, the new hummingbird feeder works quite nicely, lots of hummingbirds flitting about. And for the first time ever I am running into limitations with my Panasonic DMC-FZ50 camera that other cameras might not have.

The FZ50 may well be the most fully-featured, most versatile, most (for lack of a better word) powerful non-SLR digital camera ever made. The flexibility is extraordinary. But, photographing hummingbirds is proving to be beyond its capabilities. Or maybe it's just my capabilities that are lacking.

[Warning: Math Ahead!] Hummingbirds flap their wings at about 50 times per second. At first glance, it would seem that any shutter speed faster than 1/50th of a second would suffice, but of course that is wrong. Their wingtips are traveling about eight inches (stroke and return) 50 times per second, or about 400 inches each second. That's an average speed of about 23 MPH. Note that's average speed. The wings are at a complete stop twice during each beat, so the maximum speed is uhhh... I'm not totally confident of my math, here, so Peter or Roger or somebody please check me.

Assume 4" stroke from top to bottom. The wingtip accelerates from 0 to maximum speed for two inches, then takes two inches to slow back to zero at the bottom of the stroke. This process takes half of the 1/50 second for the complete down/up stroke, or 1/100 second to travel from top of stroke to bottom. The maximum speed (assuming linearity) during this time/distance would be reached at the half-way point on the down stroke, at a distance of two inches from the top, at a time of 1/200 second from the beginning of the stroke. (For clarification: divide the full down/up stroke into quarters, accelerating from top to midpoint of down stroke, decelerating from midpoint to bottom; repeat on the up stroke. Distance from top to midpoint is two inches. Time for each quarter is one fourth of the 1/50th second required for the full cycle, or 1/200th second.)

Now, from our high school physics, we know that Distance equals one half acceleration multiplied by the square of the time, or:

D=1/2 AT^2. A little bit of algebra shows us that:
A=2D/T^2. We know that D=2 inches, we know that T=1/200 (or .005) second. Therefore:
A=2 * 2 inches/(.005 sec-squared) or
A=4 inches/.000025 sec-squared.

That works out to a rather fantastic 160,000 inches per second-squared. I would not give credence to this number, except that the velocity figure it yields in the next step is intuitively credible.

We know acceleration, we know time, we know distance. That gives us two ways of determining velocity.

First: Velocity = acceleration times time, or:
V=AT or
V=(160,000 inches/sec-squared) * .005 seconds or
V=800 inches/sec = 67 feet/sec or
V = 45.45 MPH.

Second: Velocity Squared = 2 * acceleration * Distance, or:
V^2=2 * A * D or
V^2 = 2 * (160,000"/sec-squared) * 2 inches or
V^2 = 640,000 (inches/sec)-squared or
V= 800 inches/sec = 67 feet/sec or
V = 45.45 MPH.

Hmmm... I notice that the result of all this math gives an answer equal to exactly twice the average speed. Could I have just said that the maximum speed is always twice the average speed in these acceleration/deceleration types of problem?

[Okay, you're safe now. End Math Zone]

So what it comes down to is I'm trying to get a stop-motion photograph from a distance of eight or ten feet of something that is moving at more than 40 MPH. 1/1000 of a second doesn't cut it. At peak velocity, that wingtip moves nearly a full inch during that 1/1000 second. But... my camera is capable of shooting at 1/2000 second, that should help things, right?

Here's the crux of the problem. The larger the aperture, the lower the maximum shutter speed my camera can use. I don't know why this is, but possibly it is some mechanical limitation involving the small sensor size needed with the 12x zoom lens. I dunno. But, for me to use a 1/2000 shutter speed, I have to shoot at f8 or smaller (higher aperture number). The lighting conditions I have dictate f4.5 or wider if I want to use 1/2000 second, which I cannot do at that aperture. I can crank up the ISO, but again the small sensor size gets noisy at ISO 400, and at 800 or higher is virtually unusable. I can shoot at 1/1300 at f4 (or smaller); I can shoot at 1/1600 at f5.6 or smaller; I can shoot at 1/2000 at f8 or smaller. It takes a LOT of light to shoot f8 at 1/2000 sec.

Why not use the flash? Couple of reasons. I don't know what the duration of the camera's flash is, but it is probably more than 1/1000 sec so it won't work as a "freeze-frame" tool. More importantly, even if the flash took only, say, 1/50,000 second, there is enough ambient light to cause blurring of the wings even at f11 and 1/2000 second. Not enough light for a good picture but enough to wreck the shot.

So, I am just about ready to admit that a good DSLR might, in this hummingbird instance, out-perform my FZ50, if only because you might not have that aperture vs shutter speed limitation that I have, and with that larger sensor you can crank your ISO up to what seem to me to be insane values and get away with it.

So... how do you guys photograph hummingbirds?

tanstaafl.

Random page on the internet says you want a very short flash and not a very fast shutter?

Rest of site has lots about Hummingbird photography.

I don't. We've never had (or noticed) hummingbirds in our garden here until just about three weeks ago: two of them stopped in while heading down your way for the winter.

Maybe next summer, then.

But I would use my DSLR, a 200-300mm lens from the collection here, and the big external flash. The old 40D I have here only goes down to 1/8000th of a second, but that's probably quick enough.

EDIT: Note that at 1/8000th of a second (or anything beyond about 1/250th), the shutter is never fully open at any one instant.. so using a flash at those speeds can be troublesome, since the flash duration is probably less than 1/8000th.

My camera and flash have "high speed sync" capability, whereby the flash fires multiple times (VERY quickly) as the shutter opening moves across the sensor, illuminating the entire sensor area in segments. But this probably is a bad thing for a moving object like a hummingbird.

Cheers

This is one case where the builtin flash on a DSLR won't help you either. The shutter speed tends to be limited when using the builtin flash, for example on my Canon 10D you are limited to 1/200 second with the flash.

I've never been quite sure why that its ?

Edit:

Looks like Mr Lord just answer my question, thanks Mark.

External strobes are the way to go for a variety of reasons. Among other thing, you can locate the strobe somewhere other than on top of the camera, allowing for more aesthetically interesting illumination of your targets.

I'll suggest that a little bit of wing-blur plus the sharp image from the flash may look quite good together. I've used this sort of effect quite successfully when photographing swing dancers.

The entire rest of this thread from that point on is now being read aloud in my head in the voice of the guys up on the castle wall in the opening scene of Holy Grail. Responses are in Graham Chapman's voice (slightly irritated).

When you're using a speedlight to capture or freeze something like this, you're not concerned with the shutter speed to do the freezing for you. The shutter will become about capturing ambient light. So you will be able to use something a lot slower than you're trying to use now. You'll never freeze motion without using a strobe. Not even close unfortunately, even with the fastest SLR.

You can set up your camera so that a reasonable shutter speed slow enough that it can sync with your flash. And a small enough aperture and low enough ambient light to produce an image that would not show the details of the hummingbird you want to freeze without the strobe. Next you just need to set the strobe (or multiple) up to provide enough light to produce the image you want. Perhaps the hummingbird isolated, perhaps trying to mimic natural light (will require at least two strobes, one for fill and the key).

The strobe will paint the image while your shutter is open. The hummingbird will be frozen if the strobe is the only thing (or predominant thing) lighting it.

I think you can get all the info you need here:
http://www.rpphoto.com/howto/hummer/humguide1.asp

Not necessarily. In this case, this assumption:

and the impicit assumption you're making (if I understand correctly) that acceleration of wings is constant, explains why you get maximum speed equals double of avg. I don't know if that assumption is true in reality, though. Wings' speed may vary less regularly in one "flap", so that avg is the same but top speed is higher or lower than 2*Avg.
Am I making sense?

Yes, but is it a laden or an unladen hummingbird?

(Sorry, It's still happening to me. Can't stop it.)

I was about to answer that I am no expert on Hummingbirds I keep saying it: too much work.

An excellent resource, as was the site that tman linked to above.

I see now that I made the common mistake to hummingbird photography that most people make at first. As you point out, you can't do it with shutter speed, you need fast (1/20,000 sec. or better) flash. So, I am indeed limited by my equipment, but the camera itself is not the weak link. It has TTL flash control through the hotshoe (Panasonic does not publish the maximum flash/shutter sync speed, but in this instance it isn't relevant) but I don't own the requisite flash units. I'm not willing to shell out $500+ for a bunch of strobes and remote triggers just to satisfy my ego and be able to say I got some great hummingbird pictures. There are plenty of photos out there that are far better than anything I'm ever likely to come up with.

I'm not sure that in my shooting environment that the strobes would do the job. My hummingbirds only seem to visit during daylight hours, and where I am daylight means very bright sunlight. With an ISO setting of 100 (the lowest I have) and a shutter speed of 1/200 (my best guess at my maximum flash/shutter sync speed) my nominally correct exposure is f8. Even if I stop down to f11 and use flash, all the background and the birds themselves are lit up with enough ambient light (only one stop underexposed) to pretty much negate the results of the flash. I guess a four f-stop neutral density filter and some really powerful flash units would do the trick, but I'm just not going to go that far to get a couple of bird pictures.

However, as a result of this thread and the links in it, I now [theoretically] know how to take hummingbird pictures, even if I don't have the equipment to do so.

tanstaafl.

Look at the resources on this site: http://strobist.com

If you did want to try something like this out but wanted to keep it on a slim budget, you could go with some eBay triggers and some eBay flash heads. David at the site above talks about a number of these low-cost alternatives.

I haven't read any of the articles, but it seems to me that you want to set your camera up so that it will take a long-exposure picture that will turn out almost black, and then set off a strobe while the shutter's open.

Maybe it's so bright down there that the smallest aperture possible will still allow in too much ambient light with a reasonably long exposure. If not, though, assuming it's still possible to get flashbulbs, it seems to me that you could hook something up cheaply with a jury-rigged device involving a relay across the hot shoe, a flash bulb, and a 9-volt battery.

Then again, flashbulbs may well be far too slow for this purpose.

Slow? As in too long a duration of light emitted?

Flashbulbs, oh that takes me back to the temporary blindness my Mom was always inflicting on everyone. I'm happy they have disappeared from the casual photographers usage.

You can put an ND filter on the lens to cut out light. But you'll need more strobe power to compensate of course.

Already thought of that.

tanstaafl.

Yep.

tanstaafl.

You won't negate the use of the flash. The strobe of light will still freeze motion, it will just do so superimposed over top of a blur.

Right you are. I should have said "...negate the usefulness of the flash.

tanstaafl.

tanstaafl.

f/3.6, 1/1000s, ISO200.

I'm guessing you got lucky and managed to hit the moment when the bird's wings were moving their slowest.

Naaah... I just watched carefully, and when the wings were at their fullest extension I snapped the picture. Oh, sure, and I also taught Ansel Adams most of what he knew about photography.

This photo falls into the category of "lucky", but I guess if you take enough exposures every once in a while one of them works out. I used the on-camera flash for fill, that probably helped a little bit too.

tanstaafl.

edit: Correction. No flash.

The EXIF says no flash.

Awesome picture !

That is just lovely!

Wow! When viewed at 100% I find it not very sharp, but it is nonetheless just amazing (and way better than anything I feel capable of doing...). Congratulations!

Another hummingbird photo. This one won't stand close scrutiny, it is only a tiny fraction (<10%) of the original frame. Shot in the evening with flash.

tanstaafl.

Edgerton would be proud!

That's a good one.

I wish Doc could have lived to see some of the advances in high speed digital motion photography we've got nowadays. Like the high speed high def cameras they're using on Mythbusters and the other Discovery Channel series.

Of course it was his work that made that stuff all possible. I still think he'd jump for joy at being able to see the results instantly instead of having to wait for film to develop.