Ruby-Throated Hummingbird

I have tried for years now to get some good hummingbird photos in our yard, but to no avail.

My sister-in-law however asked me to bring my camera over to their feeder and try to catch theirs and get some print worthy shots of their family's "mascot" a male ruby-throated hummer they have nicknames Watermelon.

Took the KP and the DA* 50-135, had to hit ISO 1600 and crop, but overall, I will take it!

Florida Suse wrote:

Those are great captures! I just love that lens, it really shines on your camera. I still use it on the old k5 and they don't always come out as sharp as I would like.

Those must have been hard to get, great job!

Yeah, there are times when GAS makes my brain consider trading it in before the SDM goes out on it, but it really is a lens with amazing rendering, and the AF worked well enough.  I was able to open the top of a window and squeeze into a corner so as not to startle the birds, I had like a 6 inch opening to aim through to get the images.  It was fun!

Mike Arledge wrote:

I have tried for years now to get some good hummingbird photos in our yard, but to no avail.

My sister-in-law however asked me to bring my camera over to their feeder and try to catch theirs and get some print worthy shots of their family's "mascot" a male ruby-throated hummer they have nicknames Watermelon.

Took the KP and the DA* 50-135, had to hit ISO 1600 and crop, but overall, I will take it!

They are super photos!

I bet they exceeded your sister-in-law's expectations. Have you tried printing them?

You mentioned ISO 1600, as though you are perhaps concerned with noise. I wonder what post-processing you have done with this in mind?

The reason I ask is that I've done something that many people would object to. I downloaded the first of the JPEGs, and I processed it in the Detail panel in Lightroom: noise-reduction and sharpening. I was able simultaneously to reduce the noise across the background and sharpen the eye and claws. Without changing anything else.

I won't show the result here, (unless you ask me to), but my message is that these gorgeous photos still have room for slight image-quality (rather than artistic) tweaking.

I am printing them at home today, will decide what level of retouching for noise I do from there

At 8x10 printing (different crop) they look solid as far as noise levels

Thanks!

MightyMike wrote:

Wonderful photos, its good to see hummingbirds again on this forum

I guess I had not noticed the lack of coverage! Ha!