Help please?

Hello.

I have been fortunate enough to have hummingbird hawk moths visit my garden three years running.
Each occasion I have followed them round the garden and duly taken pictures.

Sadly the wings are always blurred due to the high frequency at which they flap.
Even at 1/8000 of a second I cannot freeze the motion.

Any suggestions would be great.

Use a flash and a higher aperture (f8 or higher)...the background may be darker (depending on how far away)

Thanks, hadn't thought of that.

Well you are very lucky to see them so often, are you on the south coast of the UK? I have only seen one once and they are very quick at each flower, I was happy to get a reasonably sharp shot.

Personaly the wing blur can add to the image. But as said above flash is the way to freeze the motion.

The key is to have as stong flash and as close as possible and use either auto or manual flash exposure control to limit the power; the flash does this by limiting the flash duration. If it fires at full power the duration might be 1/1000 sec so you want less than a tenth of full power. This is easier to work out if you are lucky enough to have a flash meter.

For the bacgtound you can try ambient fill in or better a false backdrop that will be quite close but out of DOF, I use a print of a out of focuse leaf or something.

Good luck.

Yes, I'm a Hampshire man.

Here's an example.

Heavy crop.

Don't shoot at f/1.2; your problem isn't motion blur, it's the wings falling outside of the DoF at that wide of an aperture. Try stopping down a few stops and bring your shutter down commensurately. That's a hell of a shot as it is, though; and congrats on capturing one of these guys!

I see what you are saying.
The reason the lens is 1.2 was to get the shutter speed as high as possible.
The 5Dsr is not great at high iso settings so, at the time, it made sense to sacrifice DOF.

I have a 100 macro which may have been a better choice but I would have had to push the iso to 600 for an equivalent shutter speed.

If the critter comes back I'll try again with a different lens/iso combination.

fordmondeo wrote in post #18129692
I see what you are saying.
The reason the lens is 1.2 was to get the shutter speed as high as possible.
The 5Dsr is not great at high iso settings so, at the time, it made sense to sacrifice DOF.

I have a 100 macro which may have been a better choice but I would have had to push the iso to 600 for an equivalent shutter speed.

If the critter comes back I'll try again with a different lens/iso combination.

If you set your camera's settings for ambient light to basically block all ambient light, the duration of the exposure when using flash becomes the duration of the flash, which is much faster than the shutter. You can freeze motion, and get far crisper, cleaner files. The 5DsR is fine up to ISO 1600~3200 without even thinking about it, if you expose well, you won't even notice it. If you set the camera to allow for some ambient light and blend in flash, you can still stop motion with flash duration due to light fall off.

Take a flash, and make a DIY diffuser (styrofoam plate, printer paper, etc) to spread the light out and take a few shots. You'll see a massive difference.

Stop down for depth of field and to limit ambient light. Control subject exposure with flash.

Very best,