I’ve been doing a little reflection about how many photos I’ve been taking of hummingbirds lately but I need to improve my technique so I’m glad my fountain’s working right again and that the hummers are enjoying their daily morning baths, providing me with lots of opportunity to improve.
I set my D7100 with the 70-200mm lens with its 2X teleconverter on the tripod and went outside to watch the hummers bathing. I tried sitting a couple of feet away from the fountain but discovered that it is a real trick to focus the long lens accurately at that short a distance so I moved back to about 8 feet away. I also flipped on the built-in flash (!) to provide a little more illumination and that created a little reflection off the water on the hummer’s breast and the sparkle on its feathers (I think this is a female Anna’s). But, the built in flash (!) also created an odd little reflection in the eye so I used LR’s red eye tool to remove it. I should have attached my speed light and bounced the light instead of using the built in flash but I didn’t. I’m still so afraid of ISO causing grain that I cringed at having to increase the ISO to 250 and when I examined the shot in LR, there was enough grain to make me cringe further so I used LR to reduce the graininess a bit. The tripod really helps me get sharper focus on the hummers but I need to increase the shutter speed significantly to get their wings to show so I’m going to have to either increase ISO or figure out how to effectively use the speed light when I’m photographing in the dim morning light.
My settings: f/8, ISO 250, 1/80 sec., effective focal length 600mm
