Hummer Clicks – The How To

With all the hummers that have taken over The Ranch this summer, I’m spending as much time as I can to get photographs of them. In particular I want to photograph the Calliope Hummer you see above (an immature). Our smallest hummer in No America, adult males are spectacular. I have no adults in my digital library and I want to change that. The more time I spend with them, the more I just blend in and my odds improve of getting the shots I’m after. We have just two normal feeders out along with about a dozen plants that they feed from. The feeder you see here is at the corner of the home. I am able to set up the Z 9 / Z400f4.5 w/Z1.4x about 6.5′ away from the feeder and just stand with my coffee in hand there and shoot. There is an hour period of time (around 07:45) in the morning when the sun hits the feeder in such a way it bonces the light out on the incoming hummer. When they come in on the right side, I have that unique reflected light along with filtered light of the sun lighting them up.

With that, I’m just using the ambient light to get the shot, no flash. I’m shooting aperture priority and have, very unlike me, raised the ISO to 1600 giving me a shutter speed of around 1/800. The body is sharp but the wings are a blur which is what I like. There are some challenges with this system which I’ll mention in a moment. Focusing is taken care of by the Z 9, Auto-Area AF Animal eye detection. If you look in the lower left corner of the photo below, you will see the red of the feeder. I manually prefocus on that corner of the feeder then pan to the right until I don’t see the feeder. Once the hummer comes into frame, I hit the back button and the AF takes over focusing operation. This is the alley way the hummers fly up to feed. That’s where I’m taking the photos, in that alley way to the right. Using the Smallrig Lightweight Fluid Head makes it real simple and smooth to pan and get the hummer in the viewfinder. Then I lay on the hammer and let the Z 9 work its magic. It’s really been that simple.

The photos I’m after are not just hovering shots. I’m actually after a couple in particular. Below are an example of one, the gyrations a hummer goes through in changing direction of travel. Right below gives you a hint of what I’m talking about. The bottom, out of focus image though is a prime example of it. Why is it out of focus? Simple, it’s moving faster then the shutter speed can stop. The solution, flash! Why don’t I have the flash out? Because I’m being really lazy to be honest with you. And I’m also keeping a small profile so the small Calliope will keep coming in and not be intimidated by flashes. And that’s it, that’s how I’ve been coming up with these images I’ve been sharing. Hope that encourages you to do the same thing.