Critique Style Requested: Standard
The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
I chose this image to show the arrangement of the feeder, perch, and subject for capturing birds in flight around the feeder. Right now I’m working with longer sticks so that I can get more shots in the sequence. Interesting item about the pose is that the tail pointing up will keep the bird from doing a face plant into the feeder. Also, the Z( slows down the number of shots per second when the flash is on. One thing that I also need to investigate is that the colors are very flat. I may have to change a profile in Lightroom to perk up the vibrance.
Technical Details
Z9 600mm f4 Fill Flash at -2.0 (1/4000sec at f8.0, ISO 2000) Slight crop for comp, Levels, Topaz DeNoise AI, rubber stamp tool to remove bird poop…Jim
Excellent illustration of the setup! A little more separation would be great. You say fill flash at -2 – are you using ETTL? With Canon, that wastes milliseconds with a low-level pre-flash (for some sort of exposure estimate) and spooks the subjects in the bargain. I don’t know if is enough to cause a delay in a 20 or 30 fps frame rate, but at some point you’ll bump up against the flash recycle time. You could try a continuous light. That will avoid overheating the strobe, too.
I’ve tried this and found DOF and focus point were problems. The birds didn’t want to stay in the right plane. I’m inspired to try it again!
Excellent illustration of your setup, Jim. As to Diane’s point about the delay, I think all the flashes work the same in ETTL mode, so that probably does give you just a bit of delay. You could probably play around with manual settings until you get the same amount of light from it (or very close). Nicely done.
