Requesting advice on how to successfully focus specifically on hummingbirds in flight.

[garymak]

Requesting advice on how to successfully focus specifically on hummingbirds in flight.

I’m asking this only of photographers with direct, successful experience specifically photographing hummingbirds in-flight for any tips and tricks you have found that have worked well with focusing issues.  

(Please, if you do not have direct, successful experience specifically photographing hummingbirds in-flight, then with all due respect and appreciation for your good intentions, please refrain from offering ideas, thoughts, conjectures, or other experiences with other birds or animals.)

Background: 

I have used 4 different methods for photographing hummingbirds in flight:

1) “The Usual”: high SS, medium ƒ-stop, high ISO. 

2) “Strobe for high speed shutter” with a high-shutter speed sync, a very low ISO, a very high ƒ-stop, utilizing the strobe burst of the flash (usually 1/10,000th or so) to stop-action the hummingbird in flight.  The high ƒ-stop also creates a much wider DoF in which to capture the bird in focus.

3) In turn, both of these methods have utilized 2 different types of focusing methodology: 

    A. Autofocus (various different settings and areas)

    B. Manual pre-focus on the area the hummingbird will most likely come and hover for a brief moment before setting down on the feeder.

All of these methods have yielded just 3-5 decent shots each, based purely on luck, because the main issue is FOCUSING.  The R5 auto-focus mechanism is the worst of the two, practically useless, as it simply isn’t fast enough or sophisticated enough to react to the sudden appearance of a tiny hummingbird and focus on it, and usually the autofocus misses the bird entirely and focuses on the farthest background item in the frame (the distant hedges.) Manual focus has worked the best, but still yielded only about half a dozen out of about 1,000 shots, only by luck of the hummingbird being in the exact plane of the pre-focused area.  All successes can be attributed entirely to “luck.”

Give the above, does anyone have any direct, successful experience specifically photographing hummingbirds in flight?  If so, what did you do differently that worked, or at least yielded better results than 5 lucky shots out of 1,000?  Thanks!

[Cman44]

Getting a high hit rate for Hummingbirds if very hard to do. You need to get the ones that pause at a flower for instance. Having a setup with trees and bushes as background is important to get the shots you want. 

My best shots have been at flowers that I placed within the area (my back deck) on hooks in pots. I have feeders up to draw them to the area. Sometimes I remove a few of the feeders to entice them to go to the flowers. Sometimes I get a vase and cut a stalk of Salvia or Turks Cap flowers sticking up. I try to shoot as level as possible. When they start going to the flowers I get a eye dropper and prime some of the flowers with sugar water that i also use for the feeders. No red stuff, please. 1 part sugar to 4 parts water. You can mix some 1-3 that might be even more enticing. 

As for settings you probably are good. I use back button focus, eye detection animals, 20 fps. A hassle to go through and have more cards on hand. It's time consuming , but satisfying when you start getting the shots. I don't use flash. I was scaring the heck out of the birds. 

I've been feeding them for over 30 years so they find there way to my house every year. From late August to early October is the migration. If I'm going to shoot I plan ahead to obtain the flowers. Good Luck