Hummingbird Attraction & Photographing with Natural Light - includes related article on favored food of hummingbirds

PSA Journal, April, 1999 by Roger Erich Schuettke

Choose a feeder with lots of bright red color and it will not be necessary to use any red coloring in the feeder solution. Also choose one small enough that it will require refilling every other day or, at most, every third day.

Hummers are creatures of habit. Once you have them coming to your feeder you can be almost assured they will return, provided that your feeder is maintained. If you have to be away for over three days, have a friend maintain your feeder. If it gets dry for over three days you will have to start all over trying to attract them.

Clean your feeder with a little vinegar in hot water. Never use any kind of soap.

Hummingbirds do have enemies. Cats, crows, hawks, magpies, and even sometimes, people. You must keep cats away from your feeder.

In order to photograph hummers without a strobe or flash, one needs a nice sunny day, a reasonably good SLR camera with a fairly fast shutter speed, a fast film and a 135mm lens; or better yet, use a 200mm lens. The film should have an ISO of 200 or better. If you wish to catch the bird in action, the best time is when it is feeding under full sunlight. Using a film of ISO 200 at mid-day in full sunlight and with your aperture set at f/5.6, you should set your shutter speed at about 1600. This can result in an image of the hummer with wings stopped.

Wing stop occurs twice with each beat of the wings, that occurs at top and again at the bottom of the wing beat. Now since a hummingbird has a wing beat of up to 200 beats per second while hovering, one can readily understand that it is a matter of luck to catch them stopped. However, sometimes the resulting photograph can be more realistic to nature with a slight blur. Shoot a lot of film--one good photo in 36 is a success. One can, of course, use a faster ISO film and obtain a faster shutter speed.

Utilizing an aperture of f/5.6 does cause a loss in "depth of field," but it has the advantage of yielding a blurred background, thus eliminating potential distractions. Another way to eliminate background distraction while enhancing the subject is to line up the subject with a shadowed area. This will give a black background to the picture.

Background observation can be most important. If you have distractions they can destroy even the best of photographic images. Should conditions prevent you from setting up without distractions in the background, one can often pre-place a pleasant background utilizing natural objects such as a piece of tree bark, rock or wood. Some individuals use matt board, but this should be avoided for nature exhibition slides or prints as it shows "the hand of man," whereas black shadows are natural.

Early morning and late evening have proven to be the most productive for watching hummingbird action. You can start photographing shortly after sunrise, but you'll need to give more light to your film than at mid-day. Experiment with your equipment to get the best results, keeping good records. It is a wise move to run a test film with a gray-card at various times of day under various lighting conditions to determine camera settings for the type of film you use. Remember that for hummingbird photography you are trying to determine maximum shutter speeds at different natural light conditions.