The first thing you need is a good location and a hummingbird feeder. Every commercial feeder I've seen has 3 or 4 feeder locations. Hummingbirds are very intelligent creatures and will notice you sitting a short distance away. They will purposely feed only at a station that "hides" it from you. For this reason, you will need to force them to feed only from one station. The way I do this is by plugging up the other stations with cork or tape. Best results will be obtained if the feeder is in total shade for most if not all of the day.

The camera I used was either a Nikon N90 or an N90s, but the camera is not really all that important with this method. Most any decent SLR will do. The lens I used for most of the shots in my first year of hummer shooting, 1995, was a AF Sigma 400mm f/5.6 D lens for Nikon. Some were taken with an AF Nikkor 300mm f/4 ED-IF lens. Even though both lenses are autofocus lenses, I found that it is next to impossible to get good in focus shots with AF, even with the super fast focusing of the N90s.

Even though the 300-400mm lenses allowed me to sit behind the camera and ensure focus was good before tripping the shutter, it was still hard to 1) notice I had a visit, 2) look thought the viewfinder, 3) determine if focus is good, 4) if not, focus, and 5) take the shot during a quick visit, which many are, especially if they are bothered by you. What I do is preset the focus distance and use a fairly small f/stop to get a little depth. I say a little depth as the distance from lens to subject was about 8 to 9 feet. Focused this close with a 400mm you have little depth, even at f/16, so most of the time I use an aperture setting of at least f/11, usually f/16.

Of course, a sturdy tripod is a requirement. And depending on the focal length of your lens, a cable release also helps. In fact, a long cable release would serves as an alternative to a long lens as hummers will get quite used to camera equipment very close to their feeder. But not humans. Not too close. But with a 15 foot or so cable release, you can get some real good shots with a 60-105mm macro focusing lens.

The key items of the equipment list are the lights as they are responsible for the motion freeze on the hummer's wings. In my first year of Hummingbird photography, I used two Nikon Speedlights, an SB-25 and an SB-26, but the more lights the better. Some hummer photogs recommend at least four lights. I now use three, I got another SB-25. With just two, you place them at 45 degree angles to the subject's anticipated location and at a distance of 10 to 14 inches. Yes! That close! 1. They soon get used to the lights. 2. The closer the lights, the slower film you can use and slower film is finer grain film.

Also, with a third light you get more light and therefore can stop down more. I added a third flash my second year, 1996, a used SB-25. I use the three with the two SB-25's on either side and the SB-26 mounted centered and below the subject to provide some lighting from below.

In the summer of 1995 I used a custom manufactured PC Sync cable to connect the two flash heads to the camera. I had it made as a Y-cable, with a three foot length on the bottom part of the Y and two 20 foot lengths on the other ends.

The two Speedlights were set in Manual mode. I had read that TTL flash exposure does not always produce acceptable results in hummingbird photography, and that seemed to be my experiance as well, first trying some shots with a single camera-mounted SB-26. In manual mode, I am able to control the flash duration and in hummingbird photography, for maximum action freeze you need to use the smallest possible duration for the flash(es). On the SB-25/SB-26 this is 1/64 power yielding a flash duration of 1/23,000 sec. Even at that, I still get some motion blur on some shots!!

Also, in the summer of 1995, I did not have any off camera TTL flash mounting gear. I do now, and did try some TTL shots with very disappointing results. You simply do not get the short duration required to freeze the motion of the hummer's wings. I currently use three Speedlights with the first one connected to the camera via an SC-17 extension cable. Each of the three Speedlights mount onto the light stand via a small ball head and an AS-10 mounting device. The wing lights are connected to the first light's AS-10 with SC-19 cables.

It is also recommended, but not required, to use some kind of a background. You need to mount the background well behind the subject, 6-9 feet or so, and it needs to be lighted, either by a constant light or another flash head on the PC Sync cable.

For my shots I usually used Kodak Royal Gold 100 exposing in Manual mode at 1/250 sec at f/11 or f/16. You can actually slow the shutter speed down some if you want to get more exposure on the background. That depends on what the background is. Shorter shutter speeds will make the background go pure black. Remember, the exposure of the subject in this case is purely determined by the duration and distance of the lights and the f/stop. The camera's shutter speed has NOTHING to do with the exposure of the hummingbird. I would definitely recommend good fine grain film in the 50-200 ISO range. For example, if you only have two lights, you may need to use 200. If you have three lights use 100. Four or more lights, use 50.

As I said earlier, another thing to make sure of is that the feeder is in good shade the whole time. Any light on the subject at all can cause motion ghosting. You want as close to 100% of the light which provides the exposure on the bird to be coming only from the electronic flash(es).

The last thing is patience. I would take from 3 to 7 rolls of film while sitting and waiting for about 6 hours at a stretch. During the busiest time of the summer, I would get at least one, quite often two or more birds, visit the feeder every 6-15 minutes! And in a summer of about 10 of such days, and a thousand or so frames, I really only came up with 15 or 20 of really good shots. But, again, I was learning and wasted a lot of film early on. I hope you guys don't waste as much film as I did!

In the summer of 1996, I used my new 105mm Micro lens. With this lens the camera as well as the three Speedlights had to be up front and very close to the feeder. This arrangement doesn't seem to bother the birds too much. Also, as depicted in the photo at the beginning of this page, I know use an ML-3 Infrared Remote shutter release for the Nikon N90s. A very nice accessory for the N90s!!