This a quite a timely topic for me.
Yesterday there were 1 or 2 Anna's visiting some newly bloomed flowers just over my backyard wall. They sometimes perch on small branches and seem to just "chill" for a while and if I have my camera or set up my camera and go back out to photograph them, sometimes they're still there. It seems to be an area that they are attracted to so I can observe them and photograph them perched, sometimes hovering but rarely get anything decent when they are in flight.
When in flight, they're so fast and they zig-zag in 3 dimensions so randomly, I'm lucky if they're in the frame somewhere, in the depth of focus and distinguishable as hummingbirds. What comes to mind as a comparbale challenge vs. your camera's autofocus system (excuse the movie reference) is Mr. Miyagi and Daniel trying to catch flies with chop sticks. In other words based on my experience, a bit of preparation and a lot of luck goes further than relying only on the amazing technology and features of current cameras.
For example, below are a couple of shots I took as a hummingbird left the perch. I was using the center focus point on my Rebel T7 in One Shot Focus in Aperture Priority at F7.1, ISO 200. Given that the T7 is only capable of 3fps, I was in single shooting and I think I can at least equal 3fps manually tapping the shutter button. Shutter speed on the first shot was 1/1250th and the second was 1/1000th. The 2 crops below were the only shots in my attempts to catch the bird in flight where you tell it's a bird.
I was luckier a couple of months ago. At dawn, I saw this guy feeding on some flowers in the backyard. I focused on the flower as it hovered, flew away then came back. This shot is of it flying back. I was in Manual with auto ISO. Camera set to F7.1, 1000th Sec, (ISO 1600) and used an external speedlite set for High Speed Sync.
So to summarize, I would suggest you keep doing what works best for you given your location and set up and take some guidance from a quote that I think is attributable to Lee Trevino who said, "The more I practice, the luckier I get".
Good luck!
LZ
Technique will definitely improve the odds but there is still going to be luck involved in capturing highly dynamic events with a camera. I shoot primarily sports but I spent a few minutes yesterday afternoon capturing a hummingbird that was hanging out by the trumpet vine near the pool.
With sports photography, I always tell people trying to learn the basics that the three most important decisions in shooting sports are location, location, and location. Photographing wildlife is very much the same because you will have an extremely small keeper rate if there is a high probability that something is likely to partially block the view, if the chosen point of photography is likely to have the subject constantly in and out of blocking branches, and/or if the lighting is going to be so sub-optimal that even a good capture is fairly poor with details lost to shadow or strong back illumination.
No camera or lens can focus instantly so you want to stake out your location and then choose a high probability focal point of interest and pre-focus on something in the same focal plane. Now your camera/lens combo has a much better chance of grabbing sharp focus in the tiny amount of time the subject is in that great location. So patience becomes a huge factor waiting for the variables to fall in line and the temptation is great to start capturing a lot of sub-optimal photos which will of course keep you distracted from that single optimal moment you set up.
Professionally I am a marketing prof with a PhD in marketing and for much of my career I did research and consulting in enterprise risk management. I apply this general approach to many things in life including photography because with risk management you are trying to shift the odds to increase the likelihood of a favorable result and decrease the likelihood of a negative outcome but even the best risk management never guarantees a specific perfect outcome-it just greatly increases the probability of that or an acceptably similar outcome. Think of wildlife or any fast action photography in those terms, there isn't any single magic bullet but instead a range of tactics and activities that increases the likelihood of achieving what you want.
With fall HS sports coming up, I wanted to test my recently cleaned and checked EF 400 f2.8 glass and this hummingbird was casually captured Monday afternoon. I noticed his/her activity and chose a fairly good spot but otherwise I didn't put in a lot of effort including just shooting handheld even though the 1DX III and EF 400 f2.8 is a fairly heavy combo. This was captured with the lens stepped down to f4, shutter @ 1/1600, and ISO set to auto which in this case was ISO 200 so pretty much the same setup I use for sports. I used small zone AF set to the center zone of the array and pre-focused on a group of flowers near where I expected the bird to appear and then waited for a few minutes and the hummingbird rewarded me by showing up fairly quickly.
Rodger
Nice capture!! thanks very much for taking the time to describe your technique and settings details. This is not too far off from my settings. I'm beginning to think that there is a better opportunity with hummingbirds around flowers than feeders. We don't have flowers in our yard. We have a wall of tall (50'+) Leyland Cyprus trees that provide a great nesting resource for the hummingbirds (and others) and a wonderful mottled green backdrop for the photos:
(Not sure what happened to all the data I meticulously added for each photo, but that's the problem with this clunky website.🙄 Not doing it over, though. Roughly, the images were taken either @ ƒ7.1/ 1/2000 s/ ISO800 Lens focal length: 500mm R5+ RF100-500mm F4.5-7.1 L IS USM Manual exposure OR ƒ9 or ƒ11 @ 1/2000 s/ ISO800 Lens focal length: 105mm R5+ RF24-105mm F4 L IS USM Manual exposure
But, over time and seeing other photos and seeing other humming bird situations, it seems that they hover a very short time at a feeder before diving in, and, importantly, when they are finished feeding, the just poop and dart off, back to the nest. At flowers, however, once they finish one flower, they are drawn to the next couple or so, and don't dart over, but hover around, looking and choosing the next one. At a feeder, they seem to take their fill from the relatively large supply, and, since they're "done", buzz off right away.
Anyway, thanks for the details. A lot of good confirmation in there.
