Hummers vs Nikon AF system

Greetings,

As some of you may know this will be my first summer shooting hummingbirds with Nikon gear after selling off my Olympus stuff.

With only two males in evidence so far and infrequent feeding visits I've been shooting them through the patio door when they visit as I work at my desk.

The bad news is the best I can do is side light but the good news is my editing skills are getting a good work out.

As you can imagine, the 1.7x teleconverter does not work well under these lighting conditions.

So far I have settle on the D800/80-400mm in DX mode, AFS, center point @ 20mm, shutter priority @ 1/1000, iso 1600.

"Darn Branch" or "Peek A Boo"



"Landing Gear Down"



Hopefully it won't be long before the females arrive and I can get outside to shoot them

Cheers, Don

Nice!!

I was actually able to use large white reflector board to shine some light up onto the frontal areas of some of the birds I shot. Seemed not to bother them at all with that large white board pointed directly at them.

I think this shot was one of those as there is no sun spot visible in the eye.

Hay Mike,

I have tried reflectors and may even get around to making a set up that the wind will not adjust

For the heck of it I even set up my strobes outside but decided I do not care for the look of "flashed" hummers, at least not without doing it properly. Which means treating the shoot as you would shooting a portrait with three or four flashes, a lighting ratio and a patterned paper backdrop to avoid the dreaded black background.

The flash also tends to fill in all the nooks and crannies of the feathers which give it detail.

Shooting through the window is just good practice for me, my goal is to shoot them outside in good/natural light.

A successful image, in my opinion, is one where the "eye" is clearly visible and hopefully has a nice catch light.

Next would be most of the upper body in focus. I prefer some motion in the wings so that means between 1/500 and 1/1000 in speed when they are feeding.

A bonus is some detail in the feet and some tongue

I have no other option here but to shoot them at a feeder.

The "trick" is to watch their behavior.

When they come in to the feeder they will take a sip, move back for a millisecond and come back in for a sip.

Shoot them in that millisecond of hover and clone out the feeder

Cheers, Don

Don Kondra said:

my goal is to shoot them outside in good/natural light.

A successful image, in my opinion, is one where the "eye" is clearly visible and hopefully has a nice catch light.

Next would be most of the upper body in focus. I prefer some motion in the wings so that means between 1/500 and 1/1000 in speed when they are feeding.

A bonus is some detail in the feet and some tongue

I have no other option here but to shoot them at a feeder.

The "trick" is to watch their behavior.

When they come in to the feeder they will take a sip, move back for a millisecond and come back in for a sip.

Shoot them in that millisecond of hover and clone out the feeder

Cheers, Don

Click to expand...

Same here. I love the natural light also. Just with the position of my feeder the good light is only available for a couple of hours at a particular time of day and I like shooting at all times of the day when I feel like it.

I also use a feeder and I wait until they hover, sip and back off. I don't want to take the time to clone out a feeder.

I, like you, prefer some movement blur to the wings with a tack sharp head/eyes. I do occasionally get some good detail in the feet and even a tongue once in a while!

Anyway, I thought your thread was addressing an issue with light on these little critters so I didn't mean to interrupt.