[bonaprof]

A friend of mine is taking me to a friend of his who has extensive hummingbird feeders to attract dozens of them. What do you suggest I shot to get some good photos.

Lens?
AV?
TV?

Thanks, in advance for any insight you can give me.

Ed

[manacho2005]

You're probably going to need a lens that is +200mm unless the birds are immune to your presence. I would suggest either Manual or TAv. That way your can maintain your DOF while adjusting your shutter speed to either blur the wings or freeze them.
Hope you have fun...

[Winder]

depending on range. a .410 should be all you need.

[badtux]

You're probably going to need a lens that is +200mm unless the birds are immune to your presence. I would suggest either Manual or TAv. That way your can maintain your DOF while adjusting your shutter speed to either blur the wings or freeze them.
Hope you have fun...

Agree on the 200mm+. I've had good luck shooting birds with the 55-300mm Pentax zoom. Freezing a hummingbird's wings is not going to happen with that lens though, even with the aperture full open at 300mm with that lens (5.6) you aren't going to get much beyond 1/1000 in broad daylight without going to an ISO over 3600. It's just not that fast a lens, but you do need reach to get a hummingbird if you're hand-holding in the wild and that's the lens that Pentax has so (shrug). Anyhow, given that hummingbird wings beat at around 200 beats/second, you can see how that would still leave the wings being blurred, they'd seem rather smudged and out-of-focus. It seems better to me to go to a slower shutter and lower ISO and have artistically blurred wings (and sharper body) if that's the case, rather than wings that look smudged. Though here's a hummingbird from my collection shot at 1/800, the wings are blurred as you'd expect but the effect isn't bad at all...



Doing some Googling, I discovered that most folks who freeze the wings of hummingbirds do so by setting up a hummingbird feeder in a slightly darkened environment with a backdrop behind it, then they use a bright prime on a tripod focused on the feeder with a fast flash. They then use the flash to freeze the wings and a remote of some kind to trigger the camera and flash from a distance when they see the hummingbird at the feeder. The problem there is that hummingbird feathers are reflective, and they reflect the flash, so the hummingbird doesn't end up looking natural. It seems to me that accepting wing blur is a fair exchange for a more natural looking hummingbird, but (shrug) it all depends on your artistic sensibility I suppose. I shoot wildlife hand-held in the wild, so that doesn't appeal to me. But different strokes for different folks I guess.

[ElJamoquio]

To freeze the wings, you really need the camera to be at 1/8000s. I can get there with a 200mm F/2.8. With an F/4 it's tougher. With good sunlight it's possible, though; but not on a cloudy day like the picture above.

This one was at F/6.3 and only 1/2000s, but as you can see the bird was just getting started, so her wings were a bit slower. The wings are slightly blurred.

[normhead]

I usually don't try and freeze the wings, if I did, I'd use a very fast strobe, not shutter speed to do the trick. I usually pay more attention to trying to get the sun behind me, and having a nice bright day to shoot on. Being able to sit nuzzle up to the camera and sit still is important, I'm not very good at it. More often than not my head movements getting my eye up to the viewfinder spooks them. But as long as you keep the sudden movements under control, you can get quite close.

[bonaprof]

Thanks for your suggestions. I also did a search and found a couple of helpful tutorials. I was amazed at how well my photos looked. They are generally in sharp focus with beautiful color and bokeh. I did some shots in AF and some in Manual, but it did not make much difference. I set my aperture at f/8 and my speed at 1/500+. The ISO varied but was usually at 200. I used my 300mm lens with my new AF 1.4 teleconverter. Shooting from my tripod with high repetition of shots got more good photos than bad. I was amazed at how good most of the shots were and how many shots (1098) I took that afternoon. Needless to say, I need to cull out the losers and keep the winners.

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[TER-OR]

You can also use your remote and a tripod to get a shorter lens closer - though often the hummingbirds won't care if you don't make sudden movements.

[badtux]

Thanks for your suggestions. I also did a search and found a couple of helpful tutorials. I was amazed at how well my photos looked. They are generally in sharp focus with beautiful color and bokeh. I did some shots in AF and some in Manual, but it did not make much difference. I set my aperture at f/8 and my speed at 1/500+. The ISO varied but was usually at 200. I used my 300mm lens with my new AF 1.4 teleconverter. Shooting from my tripod with high repetition of shots got more good photos than bad. I was amazed at how good most of the shots were and how many shots (1098) I took that afternoon. Needless to say, I need to cull out the losers and keep the winners.

Nice! Which 300mm lens did you use to get that one? I haven't gone hummingbird hunting with my 55-300 yet...

[jacamar]

I find hummingbirds in flight to be very challenging, what with the speed and suddenness of movement, keeping the feeder out of the frame, and the limitations of my camera and lens. This White-necked Jacobin was taken using my K-r with the 55-300 mm DA lens set at 300mm, ISO 800, F5.8, 1/180 sec. The on-camera flash gave a bit of catchlight in the eye - slightly cropped.

[Helen Oster]

A friend of mine is taking me to a friend of his who has extensive hummingbird feeders to attract dozens of them. What do you suggest I shot to get some good photos.

Lens?
AV?
TV?

Thanks, in advance for any insight you can give me.

Ed

Did you see this? Tips for Photographing Hummingbirds – PictureCorrect

[chuck1955]

At a feeder, you can use any lens you want as long as you can remotely trigger your camera. When I am shooting them, I sit on my deck about 20' from the feeder with the camera and Sigma 50-500 on a tripod, and two speedlights on stands closer to the feeder. You aim and prefocus the camera on the feeder, wait for the hummers to show up, and take the photos. The hummingbirds are not bothered by the flash.

However, the first hummingbird photos in my household were done by my son when he was about 10 or 12: he had a point and shoot with a remote that he set up on a tripod about 3' from a feeder outside a window. He then just waited in the window and took the photos when the hummers came to feed, and got some very passable shots. The key is the remote; they don't seem to care about the camera or the flash, but they don't like people moving around.

[ElJamoquio]

Dunno, flashing hummingbirds still seems sketchy to me.

[dane.dawg]

Flashing Hummers seems to be working for me.
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[ElJamoquio]

No doubt it would help with the pictures! That wasn't my point.