This is a male black-chinned hummingbird. In the past, I have always photographed hummers with a flash setup specifically because the short flash duration (when the power of the flash is reduced) freezes the wings. Several times during the Bats and Birds workshop here in Arizona I only used ambient light along with a fast shutter speed. My settings for this picture were 1/8000, f/10, and 5000 ISO. To lessen the noise, I applied Neat Image software, and, as usual, it did a stellar job. I shot this with 560mm of focal length -- 400mm plus a 1.4x teleconverter on a full frame sensor camera. Instead of using a print of out of focus foliage in the background as I often do when using flash because that prevents the elements behind the hummingbird from going black, I simply used a distant tree. Even though the lens aperture was fairly small, the tree was far enough away that, in combination with the long focal length, rendered it completely out of focus.
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