Help! Humming Bird Hell.......

tedolf wrote:

Bob Tullis wrote:

tedolf wrote:

Bob Tullis wrote:

I stage the shot, prefocus in the area in front of the feeder, and block the other 3 ports on the feeder to force the hummer where I want it. When it arrives I lean on the shutter button, so as it hovers in and out of the field of focus I have 1/2 a chance. I've used wireless flash (when it was working), but mainly wait for good light.

Cropping ends up being significant to isolate it from the cheap plastic feeder.

This was also a significant crop:

these are very nice, and your shutter speed is certainly a lot higher than mine, so I presume that you used flash on these?

No, this is natural lighting, unaided. Why do you presume a flash had to be involved for a high shutter?

You're right, that made no sense unless your EM-1 has a leaf shutter.

Damn, it must have been a sunny day!

If it's about the wings, these aren't frozen - just fortunate timing along with the SS. I shoot rapid fire so's to allow captures with the wings spread back (for better visibility of the body/head).

Ah, good idea.

I was shooting sequential (I think?), but only 4 fps.

It all happened very fast and I really didn't have time to set up.

So, you think my shots are fuzzy just because of low shutter speed? Or hand held? Or both?

No prep resulted in low shutter and having to hand-hold. Bingo [spittoon ping!]

I've tried it with less determination like you, which lead to having to use more determination for the quality desired (I'm not that steady with longer focal lengths). For other feeder birds in order to follow that action I need at least a monopod, if not set on a tripod while using a loose ball head.

4 FPS is enough, though a lot of this is timing and serendipity. Sometimes it takes many visits of the subject to get things just right (sometimes that means trying again on another day).   A GOOD session for me has about 5-10 keepers in a series of 100 exposures.   Maybe if I pursued this subject more often I'd have a better ratio, but. . . there you go.