Early this morning, I noticed the hummer bathing and I decided to set up my tripod and camera with Big Bertha (the name may change, but it’s what comes to mind right now) inside the house looking toward the fountain, about 30 feet away. Of course, the hummer was gone by the time I set up the camera but minutes later he returned and because I had the camera already set up and focused, I was able to trigger the remote and take a sequence of shots. The blog title occurred to me as I was driving to the gym and Creedence was singing on the radio, “Doo Doo Doo, lookin’ out my back door.” Light bulb moment for me. I was literally looking out my back door when I took the shots. I’m pretty happy with the results and as I get more familiar with Big Bertha, I hope to get better shots.
It was only 6:30 am, the fountain was in deep shade, and the camera was inside the house, so I increased the ISO to 1600 and opened the lens to its maximum aperture, f/4, to get a decent shutter speed (1/125). I took these shots with the D7100 because Nikon hasn’t returned my D800 yet, so the effective focal length is 900mm. I think I mentioned in my last post that it was 840mm with the crop frame camera, but Nikon says it’s 900mm. Wow. I’m impressed. As I mentioned, I was at least 30 feet away from the fountain.
I decided to try making a time lapse out of eleven shots but couldn’t figure out how to show it in slow motion, so today’s offering is one still shot and a video created from 11 sequential shots. And, don’t blink. This video goes really fast!!
REALLY fast…….. 😉 .
Carol,
You were not kidding about it being fast. Now you need to get closer so the hummer fills the frame. Plus time to break out the flash and Better Beamer so you don’t have to raise your ISO. Then you can set a branch as perch for them and photograph them sitting on the perch.
Keep up the great work.
Richard
Pretty amazing focus!