Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

Sweet, thanks. Maybe I missed it but I thought that perhaps this was during brighter daylight and the shutter speed had to be much faster to decrease the effect of ambient light.
We don't have humming birds out here. I wasn't aware they were active in low light.

Otheriwse, like you infer, I was wondering of the strobes had to be cranked up high enough to essentially cook the birds in mid-flight. :-)

With my sync speed being so low at 1/180, I simply have not used flash during the day... other than high-speed-sync capable flashes. With the vagabond minis, I will probably get the chance this weekend.

Thanks for posting the details on these shots.
I think these lights will open up a whole new world of photography.

Amoringello,
The hummingbirds will start feeding even 30 minutes before sunrise. They will also feed upto 30 minutues after sunset. I prefer sunset because the sun is low enough behind trees to give me shade that allows a difference of 6 stops plus between my camera setting 1/250 and F11 and the ambient light reading. This gives me a window of opportunity of 90 minutes and still gives me crisp pictures at 1/10000 of a second. As to cooking them, I've only seen a couple catch fire. ;)

I run my lights at 40 w-s each(1/16 power) and 8 feet away. At 1/10000 they get used them more rapidly and don't have to use sun screen. :lol:

Sounds like you're using Pentax like me.
1/180 doesn't matter as long as you have enough flash power unless you're trying for narrow DOF shots. If so, put a 3 stop ND filter on your camera and you'll be fine. The VML and Einstein have plenty of power to use during the day...