Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2013/06/18

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Subject: [Leica] Tuesday's Hummers
From: wildlightphoto at earthlink.net (Doug Herr)
Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2013 20:30:52 -0700 (GMT-07:00)

Howard Cummer wrote:

>
>http://tinyurl.com/lrvoepz
>http://tinyurl.com/l6tmmyr
>http://tinyurl.com/m7qklam
>

Howard I think it's time to pay more attention to the lighting.  These are 
wonderful photos but I think you can do better in this (rare!) bright 
daylight either by using fill flash or positioning yourself to get a view of 
the birds' sunny side.  The combination of bright backlight and the auto-ISO 
(I'm assuming this means a form of auto-exposure) means the details in the 
birds are lost in deep shadow.

An alternative would be to switch to manual exposure and set the exposure 
more for the shadow side than for the bright background the camera's limited 
brain is exposing for.

Just as an example, a Rufous Hummingbird from the sunny side 1/3000 sec @ 
f/8 ISO 400 with a manual focus 400mm f/5.6 (280mm f/4 + 1.4x extender):

http://wildlightphoto.com/birds/trochilidae/ruhu01.html

Doug Herr
Birdman of Sacramento
http://www.wildlightphoto.com