Photographing Hummingbirds
I started trying to photograph hummingbirds at the start of last summer. Just about anything I
tried resulted in unacceptable pictures. Not just a few bad ones, all of them were useless. The
following narration covers each of the attempts to get better pictures of these quick and
little birds.
First Attempt
Tripod and Telephoto - The first attempt
involved putting the camera (a DSLR) on a tripod
with a telephoto lens
(70-200) pointed at the hummingbird feeder. The feeder was located in the back yard. The camera was set
with a wide open aperature (f2.8) so a fast shutter speed could be used. I triggered the
camera with a 50 foot long remote cable. The results were dismal, got a few blurred out of focus
images. So scratch one procedure.
Second Attempt
Hand Held Telephoto - This was another failure.
The camera with telephoto was hand held standing
fairly close to the feeder. The thought here was to use the camera autofocus with
the meter in the spot mode.
Got a few pictures but none acceptable. And the hummingbirds didn't like the noise of the shutter.
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