So, I think I\u2019ve found my new hummingbird set up.\u00a0 Now I just have to work on my technique and I expect very good things this year.<\/p>\n
My first photos of hummingbirds were shot with a Sony A7S camera using my Minolta 200mm f4 Macro lens adapted with the Sony LAEA3 adapter.\u00a0 Now, the Minolta doesn\u2019t have an internal focusing motor so on the LAEA3 it\u2019s a manual focus lens.\u00a0 That\u2019s a pretty terrible combination for shooting tiny nervous birds that move like lightning.\u00a0 But by focusing on the spot I wanted the bird to be in I could make sure that the shot would be close to in focus.\u00a0 Then I\u2019d set the shutter to multiple exposures and hold the trigger down for a few seconds.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t a great method but it could work.<\/p>\n
The next set up I used was the Sony 90mm f2.8 macro lens on the Sony A7 III.\u00a0 The autofocus was pretty good and the 24 megapixels of the A7 III allowed for cropping to a close up.\u00a0 But the short focal length meant that I had to get quite close to the bird to get the shot and unfortunately the birds could hear the shutter click and this caused them to start away so I could only get one shot at a time which was not very satisfactory.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Also, the close-up distance meant the in-focus zone was very narrow.<\/p>\n
So, when I bought my Sony FE 200-600mm f5.6-6.3 G OSS lens I decided to give it a try on hummingbirds.\u00a0 But unfortunately, it was late in the season and the hummingbirds had stopped coming to the feeders.\u00a0 But one day I saw one flitting near a butterfly bush (Buddleia davidii).\u00a0 So, I set up a tripod the next morning with the lens and my camera about ten feet from the bush.\u00a0 I set the exposure speed to one thousandth of a second and the ISO on auto which in the good light present translated to a sensitivity between ISO 100 to ISO 300.<\/p>\n
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