I always wondered how people have been able to take these types of shots and decided to give it a try myself. We don't have a hummingbird feeder but we do have flowers in our yard that they do frequent, including my favorite bush, the small red hibiscus bush that spends its summers outside and winters inside.
The hummingbirds finally found our hibiscus on our deck about 4-5 weeks ago. They have been visiting several times a day since as the plant has been blooming aggressively with the warm sun. I spositioned myself in one of my deck chairs on the far side of the deck from the plant and got comfortable with a gin and tonic and waited.
My camera set up included using a monopod on my 180-600mm lens with a reasonably high ISO and shutter and aperture set on manual. I set the Nikon Z8 to focus on birds (a nice little use of AI in the firmware that tries to focus on the subject of interest and in the case of of birds, the eyes of the birds) and set the shutter to capture 20 frames a second. I kept the field of view reasonably large since I was unsure where and when the little bird was going to arrive.
I waited about an hour for the bird to arrive with the sunlight streaming from the right and the background trees (about 50-100 m away) in shadows making a near perfect soft background.
I got off about 100 images during the visit and selected this one due to the placement of the bird, the focus being crisp on both the flowers and the bird, and the light on its face and wings.
Thanks for the kind words and votes during the challenge. I really appreciate it and was stoked to have another new PB score at DPC.
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Place: 1 out of 32 Avg (all users): 7.8333 Avg (participants): 7.8571 Avg (non-participants): 7.8000 Views since voting: 2486 Views during voting: 82 Votes: 36 Comments: 17 Favorites: 0
I admire your capability to shoot these beautiful fast mooving birds :) I would have cropped out a little the left of the picture but really like this. 9
OMG OMG .. this is sublime .. !! ..
i cant even imagine capturing a shot like this . .
i think i'd have died and gone to heaven if i did ..
which makes sense as we dont have these beautiful little birds where i live .. ;)
not voting yet ..
but seeing the blue for sure in a week . :)
Hummingbird visits a Hibiscus
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