Humming BIF, Help?

[ChrisJ]

This was the last thing I expected to see near the entrance to the "Top Deck" at Dodger Stadium:

http://chrisandjoy.smugmug.com/photos/24139659-M.jpg
#1 - Wings out

http://chrisandjoy.smugmug.com/photos/24139661-M.jpg
#2 - Wings Forward (Attack Formation?)

http://chrisandjoy.smugmug.com/photos/24139655-M.jpg
#3 - Silhouette

The light was low (almost sunset), and he was moving pretty fast. Camera is a 20D, 17-85 IS lens, 1/320, F/5.6, ISO-800 (maybe I should've gone to 1600 or 3200). These are the camera JPGs, but I do have the RAWs; not sure how much I can do with them.

I need to crop out the plant bit on the right side of 1 and 2, and I would have liked to have seen some space between the bird feet and the plant. The beak has some motion blur on #3, probably fixable.

What do you think? Any comments welcome.

[Steve Cavigliano]

Chris,

Hummers are tough :uhoh I'm not sure if you can "freeze" their wings :dunno I know that 1/2000 isn't fast enough to do it :rolleyes

This would have been really tough to do better with the light you had to work with. Adding some EV would have helped lighten the hummer, but it would have blown out the background and resulted in a lower shutter speed being selected :dunno

The best way I've found to capture them in tough lighting is to use an external flash, with the proper CF number (CF 13 on the 20D?) set to ignore flash sync speed when in Aperture Priority mode. That way you can get fast speeds and some fill flash to help slow those wings down. This used to work well with my 717 and 828.


http://www.pbase.com/slo2k/image/30676133.jpg

Good luck and don't get frustrated. They are not easy to shoot.

Steve

[ChrisJ]

Good luck and don't get frustrated. They are not easy to shoot.

Steve Thanks, Steve. I wasn't really expecting to freeze the wings (not with my current glass anyway!), The wing blur even looks pleasing to me with the backdrop.

I don't have an external flash of any sort (yet), and I didn't try to flash the hummer because I thought it would scare him away. Not true? :scratch

We have a feeder at home, which some hummers found almost instantaneously, so I plan on doing some experimenting. Thanks for the tips!

Love your shot! 1/2000, huh? Zoom zoom!