Recently we have visited by a harbinger of spring. A small bird has built a nest on a light fixture on our porch. The light fixture is a left over from Halloween that I managed to put off taking down. Now that it has been adopted as a home I have a perfect excuse to leave it there. The problem I ran into is that I couldn’t get a look at the bird as every time I open the door it flew away which also complicated getting a photograph.
The first problem to solve in this nature photo is that birds are very paranoid and are notoriously hard to get near. This is partially solved by having the bird's nest literately right out of my front door. But as it wont be there if it can see me I need to not be visible. The best answer is to set the camera up out side very near the nest and trigger it from inside the house. In my case I use Canon DSLRs and have always been happy with them. Canon makes wired and a wireless remote. The wireless remote uses infrared light to trigger the camera just like a tv remote. As you no doubt know this wont work through a wall and may not work outside in daylight. So to get through the walls we need radio. There are some cheep radio triggers available but I cant say if they work well or not.
On the high end of price there are PocketWizards. These are pricey but they work every time and at a great range (up to 1600ft). PocketWizards are usually used to trigger flashes of camera (see http://www.strobist.com/) but with a pre-trigger cable they can also be used to trigger the camera.
So the basic setup works this way: nest on top of the light, camera with a telephoto lens on a tripod aimed and focused on the nest (No auto focus. Set the focus then switch AF off), PocketWizard connected to the camera by pre-trigger cord, second PocketWizard with me inside the house. When I hit the test button on the PocketWizard the camera fires.
This system works fine. I am in the house comfortable and warm and since the bird doesn’t see me she returns to the nest and poses for her portraits. This is where the second challenge comes in. I knew going in to this that it was much to dark to get sharp photographs using only natural light so we add flashes.
In this case I used 2 Nikon sb-26s one on a stand and the other clamped to the front porch light. Both flashes are set to 1/4 power and are approximately at 45 degrees to either side of the nest. The flashes don’t really seem to bother our bird but they give me the light I need. In fact at this range 1/4 power is a ton of light and I end up with f32 at ISO 100. Shutter speed on the camera is up at 1/250 to get rid of any ambient blur if the bird moves. I could lower the power but when the camera is so close to the subject depth of field is typically very shallow so f32 really helps to get the whole bird and nest in focus.
To get the strobes to fire in sync with the camera you have to use what PocketWizard calls relay mode. This is easy enough, the PocketWizard connected to the camera with the pre-trigger cord is placed in the hot shoe. Then the PocketWizards connected to the flashes are set one channel higher then the one on the camera and in the house. For example the PocketWizard in the house with me is on channel 3 the PocketWizard on the camera is on channel 3 the ones on the flashes are on channel 4.
I set this up for fun and as good practice as I am using remote cameras at weddings now. This allows me to get a second angle that I would otherwise not be able to get or that would be to disruptive. The bird photos are not by any means art but they serve the purpose of identifying the bird with out any undue stress to her and it will be a good setup for humming birds later in the season.
