In the summer, I get lots of hummingbirds outside my window. Unfortunately, these little guys don’t linger long, so getting a decent shot takes the right equipment, the right settings, patience, and luck. I can’t always control the latter two, but can easily control the first two. For these images, I elected to employ my D300 with the 70-200mm VR. This lens is excellent as the VR reduces the natural shake in my hands – I’m not a tripod – and it’s a fast lens with a max aperture of f/2.8. For the first image, I wanted the beak in focus and allowed the wings to blur. ISO of 200 to maximize image quality, and a shutter speed of only 1/200. Since the relative motion of the beak was not much, it’s nice and sharp and the wings blur into the background. Note her little feet dangling in the background.

For the next shot, I wanted the wings frozen. In this case, I used an ISO of 800, again an aperture of f/2.8, and given the sun, was allowed an exposure of 1/4000 of a second. This was quick enough to freeze the wings, and on the D300, ISO 800 looks pretty good – not too much degradation in image quality. The depth of field (DOF) is deeper in the second image since the subject was a little bit farther away. For more info on DOF, I recommend this calculator (http://www NULL.dofmaster NULL.com/dofjs NULL.html). This bird is the male as he has green feathers: