Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Humming Birds at Terry's Lodge





I was over to Terry's Lodge tonight. He has two humming bird feeders on the front deck of the lodge and I experimented with different lenses and camera settings trying to get a couple of half decent pictures. I want you to know it isn't as easy as it looks, especially with 8 or more ferocious hummers dive bombing and chasing each other around. They never stayed in one spot for more than 1/20th of a second, if that.

Picture 1 and 2 were taken at ISO 800 and 1/6400 of a second to freeze the wings, in natural light from the setting sun. The others were taken with a flash at ISO 800 and 1/500th second.

I know these are not spectacular pictures. I posted them here as I was pleased just to get a couple of reasonable looking pictures. Now I know what works and what doesn't I can build on what I have learned and hopefully have much better pictures next time.

4 Comments:

At August 03, 2006 4:56 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Cool. If you just posted the first shot, I'd have never guessed it to be a hummingbird in that pose. I think the third shot is my favourite. Interesting colours/light with using the flash. Thanks too for posting the "specs" as you know I always ask! LOL!!

 
At August 03, 2006 4:56 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Cool. If you just posted the first shot, I'd have never guessed it to be a hummingbird in that pose. I think the third shot is my favourite. Interesting colours/light with using the flash. Thanks too for posting the "specs" as you know I always ask! LOL!!

 
At August 03, 2006 4:57 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oops...Now how did THAT happen?!?

 
At August 03, 2006 5:20 PM, Blogger Paul Wood said...

Hi Mrs Rule;

Not sure what happened but not to worry.

I have another picture of number three with his eye closed. I wonder how fast they blink their eyes, seeing they beat their wings so fast?

I think I could freeze their wings at 1/2000th but I am not sure if the wing tips would be sharp. Guess it depends a lot on the position of the bird eh?

Paul...

 

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