Black Bellied Hummingbird

[Christoph Belanger]

Another from my recent trip to Costa Rica. I know, I cut off the leaf at the top, in this image, but I have others where the leaf is there and the bird was correspondingly placed too far to the bottom of the frame. Perhaps I should have gone a bit wider, but then the bird would have been smaller. In any event, this is full frame with no crop and no cloning.

Details: Camera: Irrelevant, Shutter speed: 1/200 sec, Aperture: 13, Exposure mode: Manual, Flash: Multiple External E-TTL set manually, Flash exposure compensation: +1/3, Metering mode: Evaluative, Drive mode: Single frame shooting, ISO: 200, Lens: EF70-200mm f/2.8L USM +2.0x, Focal length: 400mm.

[Waqar Amin]

Love the shoot.
I always love to see hummingbirds, unfortunately in this part of the world we will never see hummingbird (Singapore).

[Randy Stout]

Christoph:

Because the leaf is so close in color to the background, it doesn't bother me that it is cut off, it just seems to fade out. Very interesting perch, smooth background (artificial?)

I wish there was a bit more lighting on the dark areas at the throat and top of head. Catchlight is effective.

The lighting really gave me the impression that something had been done in post along the left side of the bird, almost as if it had been masked, probably just the side effect of a sharp subject against the very smooth background.

Hope to see more of these beauties, and thanks for your membership support:D

Cheers

Randy

[Christoph Belanger]

I wish there was a bit more lighting on the dark areas at the throat and top of head. Catchlight is effective.

Thanks for the comments, the same lighting that is falling on the back is also falling on the dark areas... the bird's dark areas are almost black - even the gorget is black.

[Randy Stout]

Christoph:

Thanks for the info about the dark plumage. I really only know the ruby throated hummers, that we have in the eastern US. Their gorget can look very different depending on how the light strikes them, and I thought perhaps that was the same thing here.

Cheers

Randy