Tonight I decided to play with the hummers again, and try shooting at a more reasonable ISO — this time, ISO 400. I hauled everything out on the deck, Darla replaced the hummer food, and I waited for the fireworks.

Tonight, there were three hummers flitting about, dive bombing each other. We seem to have a big male bully that was running everyone else off. That made for some fun and frustrating shooting.

In tonight’s shooting, I was at 1/1000th second around f/4 again. Tonight though, the hummers were dancing around the feeders, almost like they were watching for the bully. I thought this was gonna make for some great shots, but… I found out that I really needed the flash for that shot, and the recycle time on the flash was killing me. I was only getting the flash firing about every fourth shot, and that meant missing a lot of action.

Did I get any good shots? You betcha. However, there’s room for improvement. I need to get a constant light source on the feeder — probably two lights, so I can cut down on shadows. That’ll keep me from having to fool with the flash recycle time, and should allow me to just shoot as much as I want. The other thing to help would be to get the two feeders at the same height on their hangers. Right now, the two feeders are at different heights, and it’s tough to adjust quickly between the two heights. Of course, a ball grip with a handle might just solve that problem! 🙂