Hummingbirds in Flight and a Baltimore Oriole with A7R IV and Sigma 60-600mm Sport

I was at Westmoreland Sanctuary today with my A7R IV and Sigma 60-600mm f/4.5-6.3 DG OS HSM Sport and the late afternoon light was perfect for capturing some birds of Spring:


A Male Ruby Throated Hummingbird was coming out of the sun almost straight at me.


He put on the brakes. I was caught.


The female came from the opposite way out of the shadows and into the light.

All images are from 3 image bursts at Hi+ using Tracking: Flexible Spot M in APS-c mode. The Sigma 60-600mm Sport handles birds in flight quite nicely on the A7R IV.

Although I was out primarily to capture Hummingbirds, this Baltimore Oriole showed up to see what I was up to. And gave me a few seconds to capture some portraits as well:


Baltimore Oriole I


Baltimore Oriole II

Both were single shot images, but also using Tracking: Flexible Spot M.

Thanks for looking and comments are always welcome.

--
Visit my VisionLight website:
http://edwardmichaellach.zenfolio.com/
See WHAT'S NEW:
http://edwardmichaellach.zenfolio.com/p833842176
Collections by Individual Lens:
http://edwardmichaellach.zenfolio.com/f551238473
Collections by Individual Camera:
https://edwardmichaellach.zenfolio.com/f585961546

awesome. I had tried back in film days and spent whole role or two with one mediocre shot. Ha.



what as did you have to use to capture them?

k-photo1 said:

awesome. I had tried back in film days and spent whole role or two with one mediocre shot. Ha.

what as did you have to use to capture them?

Click to expand...

Thank you for the comment. I also remember trying birds in flight back in the day with film. I had some success by working on my panning technique while follow focusing then, and still use the same techniques now. But those techniques are tremendously helped now by modern camera and lenses' CAF and tracking capabilities as demonstrated by the A7R IV and Sigma 60-600mm Sport. The most work these days is just acquiring the tiny birds in the viewfinder as they dart around. And that just takes a lot of practice.

All of the images were a little too dark for my liking (did you edit on a calibrated monitor?), but with that said - they were spectacular!

I was surprised at how well you captured the hummingbirds with a low shutter speed of only 1600/sec. Nice Job.

Kevin

JerseySailor said:

All of the images were a little too dark for my liking (did you edit on a calibrated monitor?), but with that said - they were spectacular!

I was surprised at how well you captured the hummingbirds with a low shutter speed of only 1600/sec. Nice Job.

Kevin

Click to expand...

Thanks Kevin, I appreciate you taking the time to comment.

On the day I captured the images, I actually liked the "little too dark" results because that contrast was what I visually perceived in the very bright, harsh sun as I was photographing. The dark black and orange really caught my attention. They were posted with little editing to that contrast. But as with all my images, I review them a couple of days later and thought the same as you. They were a "little too dark". So I did open the shadows "a bit". I then put the newer versions on my website, but unfortunately one can not re-edit them here. So here's a post of one of the newer versions:





I hope you like it better.

I would normally use my A7R IV's C2 mode for BIFs, which is a much higher shutter speed. But as I saw the birds fly in, I was on C1, my standard wildlife setting. But with a lot of practice I have learned the flying habits of hummingbirds, noticing the way they often change speeds in flight. With that knowledge, Hi+ setting, a 3 image burst and a lot of luck, 1/1600th can actually work quite often.

Thanks again. Ed

--
Visit my VisionLight website:
See WHAT'S NEW:
Collections by Individual Lens:
Collections by Individual Camera:

Hi Ed,

It still looks to dark, even though you lifted the shadows. As such, it makes me ask again - are you working with a calibrated monitor? Calibration can make a world of a difference in how your photos print, or are viewed by others.

It took me a lot of wasted dollars at commercial printers to learn that lesson.

Kevin

JerseySailor said:

Hi Ed,

It still looks to dark, even though you lifted the shadows. As such, it makes me ask again - are you working with a calibrated monitor? Calibration can make a world of a difference in how your photos print, or are viewed by others.

It took me a lot of wasted dollars at commercial printers to learn that lesson.

Kevin

Click to expand...

Thanks for pushing me Kevin. It's not that my monitor is not calibrated. It is. It has more to do with my stubborn artistic idea of what I wanted the images to look like vis a vis what my eye saw before lifting the camera. In real life, the oriole was jet black and deeply saturated orange in the bright sun against a dark gray barely lit wall in the shadows. Even in the original images, though I hardly edited the bird, I did bring up the wall considerably.

But my stubbornness is subsiding and I'm liking my "artistic idea" less and less. So I'm creating a series of layers in Photoshop with the base being the original and the top layer being a point where I think I've gone too far. The layers in between will be gradual transitions between the two extremes. And one of those layers, I'm pretty sure closer to your idea of the image than my original, will be the final.

UPDATE: Here are the first candidates layers from the Photoshop Edits as shown on an updated WHAT'S NEW page from my website (my website is where I make my final decisions about the presentation of personal or pro bono images. Professional images are a whole other procedure.):




These updated images have also been posted to the actual Gallery on my website.

Although maybe not final, I think it's a major improvement. Your help has been much appreciated.



--
Visit my VisionLight website:
http://edwardmichaellach.zenfolio.com/
See WHAT'S NEW:
http://edwardmichaellach.zenfolio.com/p833842176
Collections by Individual Lens:
http://edwardmichaellach.zenfolio.com/f551238473
Collections by Individual Camera:
https://edwardmichaellach.zenfolio.com/f585961546