Robin's Assorted What Not's

Robin W

Senior Member
The baby hummingbirds have arrived and it is so fun to take their photos. I'm guessing we have about 12 to 16 babies at our 5 feeders. And they are really putting on the show for us, all day long.
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Robin W

Senior Member
Our local library is having a photo contest and the theme is garden. While I have a garden, I forgot to water it enough during our drought and it doesn't look good enough for photos so I concentrated on pollinators on the flower garden. We were allowed to enter 3 photos and should find out the results on Sept 5th. The winner gets a gift certificate to a local fruit market.

I got an email last night from the Oldham County Public Library informing me that one of my photos was chosen, however, they did not tell me which one. There were 149 photos submitted from 50 different photographers. They chose 24 photos that will be printed and hung in the local Library starting September 13th and remain up until the end of the year. Three of the winners will get a gift card to a local fruit market and they will be chosen at random. I guess I will have to visit the Library to find out which one they chose.

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Needa

Senior Member
Challenge Team
Our local library is having a photo contest and the theme is garden. While I have a garden, I forgot to water it enough during our drought and it doesn't look good enough for photos so I concentrated on pollinators on the flower garden. We were allowed to enter 3 photos and should find out the results on Sept 5th. The winner gets a gift certificate to a local fruit market.

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I think you have some winners here. (y)
 

Clovishound

Senior Member
It's tough to get them while they're "interacting". I have yet to get them in the same plane of focus. What shutter speed did you use for the "doubles"? I've been finding that I can get by with as little as 1/2000 th, if I have a series where some have the wings at the top or bottom of the stroke, and if I don't mind a little wing blur, which I don't. Last go round, I shot at 1/8000 with a few higher. 1/80000 seems to be the magic number for sharp wings. I don't particularly care for feeders in my images, but the one you're using is much more acceptable than the normal red and yellow plastic variety.

Nice job!
 

Robin W

Senior Member
My shutter speed depends a lot on how much light I have. If I have a lot of light I go to 4000 and above. I don't like my ISO going over the 6400 mark since my photos tend to get to grainy after that. I generally don't like them at feeders either. This is a feeder my son gave me at Christmas so I wanted to send him some pictures of the hummers using it. But when I do doubles I will try to catch them just off of the feeders where I can crop out the feeder if need be. Right now the babies are all hatched and out of the nest. I have about 20 or so hummers visiting and I love sitting on the deck and trying to get a great shot of them. I will be sad when they migrate out next month. Thank you!
 

Clovishound

Senior Member
I tried various ISOs in preparation for a talk on hummingbirds. I found that after running it through Topaz, or even using the denoise feature in Lightroom, an ISO 8,000 image was just fine. I even printed a 13x19 print to see if the detail would stand that kind of enlargement. It did. I posted a thread about that a few weeks ago.

Of course, I'm using a full frame camera, which helps with noise, although I have been cropping them, sometimes a fair amount. You might be able to get by without as much cropping with your crop frame sensor.
 

Robin W

Senior Member
I tried various ISOs in preparation for a talk on hummingbirds. I found that after running it through Topaz, or even using the denoise feature in Lightroom, an ISO 8,000 image was just fine. I even printed a 13x19 print to see if the detail would stand that kind of enlargement. It did. I posted a thread about that a few weeks ago.

Of course, I'm using a full frame camera, which helps with noise, although I have been cropping them, sometimes a fair amount. You might be able to get by without as much cropping with your crop frame sensor.
I may try using my D850 this afternoon and see what type of results I get. The ISO at 6400 is just my preference and where they seem to come out best for me. Most of my photos don't get cropped to much because I am no more than 10 feet from most of the birds when I take their photo.
 

Clovishound

Senior Member
I was expecting the ISO 8000 shots to be lacking detail after processing. I was rather surprised at how good they turned out. I see a lot of respected photographers shoot at surprisingly high ISOs when they have to, and still get good results.

I know, it's a little off-putting when you bring a high ISO image into Topaz and it displays a small section blown up to full screen with all the noise looking like gravel.
 

Robin W

Senior Member
This little guy has picked the nail I hang suet on in the winter for his perch to ward off offending others from the feeder he wants to claim as his. But upon returning to his nail he spots a wasp and puts on the brakes.

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D'Grump

Senior Member
Territorial little buggers, aren’t they? I like the pictures! They show the .5 ounce bird with the 2 pound attitude! Thanks for posting!
Andy
 
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