@martin.scharnke asked me to post a hummingbird showcase, here 'tis.
Next day:
First couple the first day a bit blurred; later in the day learned to set Manual mode, at least 1/2000sec (later I used 1/4000sec), f8. and auto ISO. Exposure mode was highlight-weighted matrix, which I use for just about everything. All of these were taken from a chair on my porch, about six feet from the honeysuckle vine. All are heavily cropped, even with a 300mm lens on a FF camera.
What a nice set. Hummers here in Virginia are âfilling upâ for their winter migration, so thereâs a frenzy around my plants and feeders as theyâre chasing each other off.
Theyâre a fun subject. I need very high speeds to freeze motion, but they like to hover so I can get good shots at 1/400â if I donât mind the motion blur in their wings. And even then I can get a nice clean shot at that speed if their wings happen to be fully spread out.
I actually like a bit of blur, gives the sense of motion.
It really for me was a âgrab-bagâ, Iâd sit there with my elbows against my chest, holding the camera and lens generally pointed in the direction of the vine, focus preset to the general distance. Wait, wait, wait⌠when a blur showed up, point in that direction and start shooting. Theyâd usually pause at one flower, so I could center them in the frame, but the angles I got were a function of where I satâŚ
Lovely collection.
We donât have many where I live, but one tends to visit every day or two. Itâs quite hard to tell how often it comes actually. Maybe itâs coming multiple times a day and I just donât see it/them.
Anyway, I hope one day to have the time to just sit there and wait with my camera. It usually comes when Iâm eating and donât have my camera with me.
These are some lovely shots! Thanks for including the shop talk about how you adjusted your settings over time. Since I rarely shoot wildlife, it was kind of surprising how high the shutter had to go! Its rare my shutter ever goes north of 1/500th
Beautiful pictures. Thanks for sharing.
Funny, at first I thought my max shutter speed was 1/2000sec, as it wouldnât dial higher. Reading the manual later, recalled Iâd set it to Electronic Front Curtain Shutter (EFCS), which limits the shutter speed. Switched back to full mechanical shutter, and now I can dial up to 1/8000sec.
The freaky one is auto ISO. Between birds, Iâd wave the camera around and watch the ISO change, going as high as 11400. And the noise in such low-light photos is minimal.
Yes, the noise is quite all right even with the last image. Some hot pixels in the last two?
Next challenge is to capture them blinking. I wonder how much they blink. Ha ha.
Great shots! We get hummingbirds from fall through spring and Iâm looking forward to hearing them buzzing around my porch in the next few months.
Iâm usually set up with my tripod for that very reason. I planted a bunch of hummingbird friendly flowers on my patio so I just wait for them with my morning coffee.
We have a male and at least two others that come every 15-20 minutes. You can tell who are the encroachers because the dart around nervously and donât stay very long, while âBig Mamaâ will take her time and sample everything.
Thank you so much. We have different birdlike here down under, so Iâve never seen, let alone tried to capture a hummingbird. They are very elegant in appearance in my opinion, and the reverse-flight superpower, plus the very rapid wing movement is part of the fascination factor for me. I agree that motion blur is helpful in conveying this, but I also appreciate the superquick exposure that allows me to see what these birds actually look like.
Thank you once again.
I havenât really paid attention to my hot pixels. Spent more time on dust spots, even put a spot tool in rawproc. Now, youâve got me wonderingâŚ
Thanks to the marvelous wonder that is AI, we have this answer on blinking:
" Yes, hummingbirds do blink, although it appears they blink very rarely. They possess a nictitating membrane, or âthird eyelid,â which sweeps horizontally across the eye to clean and moisturize it while the bird is flying at high speeds, acting like natural flight goggles. High-speed photography can sometimes capture these rapid blinks, making them seem even rarer than they are."
Now, to go find out if this is right⌠
Not sure what that last sentence actually meansâŚ
Theyâre like a fly thatâs had a few cups of strong coffee. Theyâre like a streak on any long, straight trajectory; when the get to where theyâre going, they flit about uncannily until they stop, just for a second or two. Itâs interesting to watch them service a bush with multiple flowers, darting and hovering.
Nice pics! I never got the opportunity of seeing those birds in person, I think.
Is âExposure modeâ what my Canon camera calls âMetering modeâ? Hum I guess so: a web search showed that Nikon has a âMatrixâ choice for that. I never fiddled with that setting, but sometimes hesitated to, because the camera sometimes overexposes the face of the figurines I shoot, as if saying âYo man, look at how nice the background â AKA 99 % of the picture â looks nowâ, and Iâm like âDude, I donât care about the background, just stop burning that face!â, but I just adjust the exposure compensation thingy to ask for something darker and go on with my business. 
Didnât spot them until you mentioned it. Strange. RawTherapeeâs filter, even at the most peaceful setting, generally makes short work of such occurrences. 
Iâve caught some blinking, mainly when theyâre perched. Itâs novel when you first see it, but after awhile it looks as if theyâre drunk.
I guessed as much. I am sure they also close their eyes when sleeping. Just have not seen one in person, let alone one blinking in a photo.
Yeah, âmetering modeâ is the more appropriate term. Most metering modes measure a place or region in the scene to determine a middle-gray value; âhighlight-weightedâ instead means the exposure is adjusted to keep the higher values under-saturation, which pushes the rest of the image darker. I use this mode almost exclusively, with the realization Iâm going to have to manually lift shadows in post.
Re: hot pixels, Iâm using software I wrote, just havenât felt compelled to write a hot-pixel mitigatorâŚ
Iâm just too slow to see anything faster than a light jog 
Thanks. Sounds cool indeed. Iâll need to get a closer look at the Canon modes, but Iâm not sure they have something like that. They all sounded like variations on how important the subject is with respect to the rest of the image.
So hardcore.
I wish I could say it was one of the features I bought the camera for, but I didnât discover it until I spent some time reading the manual. That, and IBIS, didnât know I needed that until I used itâŚ
