In the past, I’ve photographed hummingbirds with a multiple flash set up. It works great, and I intended on doing that in Peru. But the place we visited had many feeders, each with four ports from which the hummers could nectar. This is not conducive to using flash because the birds aren’t forced to drink from one predetermined spot where I could focus. Instead, they are all over the place. Therefore, the participants in my photo tour group and I used fast shutter speeds instead. This white-necked Jacobin was the species I wanted most because sometimes it would flare its tail beautifully. At most, this would last one full second, but most of the time it was probably around a quarter of a second – too fast for my reaction time plus the time it takes for the camera to focus. I usually missed it, but in two hours I captured two good images with the white tail feathers beautifully displayed. My settings were 1/5000, f/7.1, and 8000 ISO. I used a 500mm focal length hand held.
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