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Ready for a little nectar


Tom Barry

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Thanks, Stuart, Francois, Bill and Mark.

Mark, I have potted and planted flowers (butterfly weed and black-and-blue salvia are much favored by our hummers), feeders, etc., for birds, hummers, butterflies and other pollinators in our backyard and to a lesser extent the front. My best results come from two places in the backyard. On a lower patio, I sit in a chair between big pots of hibiscus, so the flowers in pots going up the stone stairs (we're on a hillside) are in sunshine with a shady background. The other is a folding chair I set up in the shade by rose bushes at the side of our greenhouse; this gets me closer to the flowers. I don't hide, and simply sit still. I can even get up and move slowly toward a hummer without disturbing it. Quick movement will scare the bird off. Also, I generally have found that flash startles hummers, and of course you can't fire bursts with flash, so I don't often use it. I use any one of my cameras that has a good burst mode (In this case, the FZ1000) and a telephoto reach of at least 400mm. I like to use ISO 400 or higher. Most newer cameras will give good results at even higher ISOs. When shooting hummers at flowers in the sun, I spot-meter, so the background is dark. Hummers that are concentrating on flowers will give me time for a good number of bursts. I don't rely on follow-focus or servo focus because I haven't got a camera that can follow these quick little birds reliably. When the bird moves to a new flower, or hovers for a moment before diving in, I fire a high-speed burst, trying to keep focus on the head/eye. I hand-hold usually, because I find tripods are a pain to use and avoid them whenever possible in my photography.  There are far fewer "keepers" than "throwaways," and If I were using film, it would be ruinously expensive.

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