Hummingbird Help!

[ktuli]

Ok - so let me preface this with these hummingbird shots are just not quite up to the caliber that we've been seeing here on the forums. I'm hoping folks can look at these shots and give me pointers on what I can do to improve my hummingbird shots. We have two females that visit our feeders and (less frequently) flowers in our yard. We've seen a male maybe two or three times - he's very elusive.

With having such frequent access to these beautiful birds, I'd really like to step up my game here. I hope folks here can help!

All shots are taken with a Canon 7D with a Sigma 150-500mm f/5-6.3 racked out to 500mm. Tripod mounted with the OS feature turned off. I've been trying to get better about using the single-point AF option and moving the AF point over the bird and feel it has helped slightly. All of these were taken with ISO of 6400 (I know - it is a bit high, but it was a little dreary/overcast) so I could get a shutter speed of either 1/1000 (first 3 with f/8) or 1/2000 (last frame with f/6.3 - widest the lens goes at 500mm). Even at 500mm and being about 15ft away, all of these are fairly heavily cropped (I can post originals if that helps).

Is there any particular PP I should be doing on these?

Many thanks in advance!!!

- Bill

[JPS]

Hi Bill,
As you already know the ISO has had an impact on your pictures here. Hope didn't mind I tried a bit of PP and come up with this. Hope you didn't mind me trying?
regards
John

[ktuli]

John,

I don't mind at all - can you give me some pointers as to what you did on these photos so I can maybe do the same PP in the future when needed?

Thanks!

- Bill

[JPS]

John,

I don't mind at all - can you give me some pointers as to what you did on these photos so I can maybe do the same PP in the future when needed?

Thanks!

- Bill

Hi Bill.
I use Elements 9 and downloaded a 'plug-in' called Neat, it is a 'noise' reduction plug-in. This plug-in can be downloaded free for non-commercial use at this site:
http://www.neatimage.com/win/photoshop/index.html?d85
This package once installed can be found in Element 9 under the 'Filter' tab. Very easy to use. This allows you to reduce the noise and once applied returns you the the standard Elements screen.

The only other thing I did was some selective sharpening on the birds themself, 130 % @ 0.8 radius.
All in all about 10 minute work per shot of course you can spend more time and make more tweaks to your liking.
I hope this helps.
Kind regards

[ktuli]

John,

Thanks for the pointers. I have both CS5 and PSE9, so I'll have to see how I can best use that. I'm kind of a toddler with post processing - for the most part, I just tweak things in Adobe Camera Raw and crop as needed. I really do need to get into more PP work though.

- Bill