Momma and Baby Hummingbird... Velvet-Purple Coronet

[Tom Stermitz]

Hundreds of hummingbirds cluster around feeders in Ecuador. I shot this momma-baby Velvet-Purple Coronet in Western Ecuador with a 70-300mm on Nikon D90. That lens is a great compromise for travel, but the f/5.6 is a little slow in forest floor and rainy conditions. In this case, there was a lot of open, semi-cloudy sky and there were some natural branches near the feeders. 240mm on crop sensor, 1/160 s at f/5.6 ISO 400.

I presume this was momma and baby, as the one on the right was begging for food, and the left-one seemed to be feeding it. I have about eight similar shots with different head angles and the mom closer or farther from the baby. I did very little post processing, maybe trimming to highlights and shadows, with about 5% cropping. IOW this image is 4032x2688, and you can see the detail in the crop of the hummingbird feet. Noiseware Professional is my friend! Made the creamy background creamier. Any less depth of field, and maybe I start losing detail in the hummingbirds.

I'm open to any and all critiques and suggestions...






Tom Stermitz
http://photokinesis.info

[Randy Stout]

Tom:

Interesting interaction, which I don't think I have seen before from hummers.
Nice wing position on bird on right.

The bird on the left seems a bit soft to me, probably because she is a bit further away (DOF)

Even if you had been carrying f/2.8 glass, the DOF needs here wouldn't have allowed the faster aperture, so no problem there.

Cheers.

Randy

[Tom Stermitz]

I'm discovering that I need to use ISO 400 and 800 in order to get good pictures. Thus, the usefulness of noise reduction software.