Hummingbird approaching Bugloss
I would like to tell the story of how I came to get this picture. It will only be of interest to a few diehard amateur photographers who might have experienced similar frustrations and rewards from our hobby.
This summer, we have had practically no hummingbird visits to our feeders. Now and then, the feeders are visited by a single hummingbird, giving rise to the impression that we only have one in our area. This is in sharp contrast with past years when our lot has been almost constantly abuzz with Hummingbird hubbub. After a while, I noticed that “our hummingbird” was paying regular visits to a Bugloss plant growing wild very close to our front door. Evidently, it preferred the Bugloss to our feeders.
I decided that this was the perfect opportunity to try out the new auto-capture feature that Nikon recently added to the Z8 by a firmware update. I set my tripod and Z8 up about 8 or 9 feet from the Bugloss with a 300mm lens and focused on the part of the Bugloss where I thought the hummingbird was most likely to go. Just as I was about to initiate the auto-capture and was looking at the screen at the back of the camera the hummingbird flew right into the frame in perfect focus and exposure and in exactly the position in which I hoped to capture it. Before I could get my finger to the shutter release it was gone !! I could not believe my bad luck. After that, several hours, spread out over a couple of days, of having the camera in auto-capture mode produced zero results. I gave up.
The morning after deciding to suspend my auto-capture project, I was at my desk and, out the window, I observed a couple of birds engaging in some strange behaviour high on a white pine. I got my Z8 with the 160-600 mm lens and went to my front door to take some handheld pictures. The birds were too far away to get any good shots. Before I went back into the house, my attention turned wistfully to the Bugloss which had been the scene of my photographic defeat. I wondered if I was far enough from the Bugloss to focus on it with my long lens. So, I pointed my camera to it and began trying to focus on the Bugloss. The very first thing I saw through my finder when the image came into focus became the picture you see above.
The hummingbird gave me a second chance at exactly the image I had missed a couple of days earlier!!
Hummingbird approaching Bugloss
I would like to tell the story of how I came to get this picture. It will only be of interest to a few diehard amateur photographers who might have experienced similar frustrations and rewards from our hobby.
This summer, we have had practically no hummingbird visits to our feeders. Now and then, the feeders are visited by a single hummingbird, giving rise to the impression that we only have one in our area. This is in sharp contrast with past years when our lot has been almost constantly abuzz with Hummingbird hubbub. After a while, I noticed that “our hummingbird” was paying regular visits to a Bugloss plant growing wild very close to our front door. Evidently, it preferred the Bugloss to our feeders.
I decided that this was the perfect opportunity to try out the new auto-capture feature that Nikon recently added to the Z8 by a firmware update. I set my tripod and Z8 up about 8 or 9 feet from the Bugloss with a 300mm lens and focused on the part of the Bugloss where I thought the hummingbird was most likely to go. Just as I was about to initiate the auto-capture and was looking at the screen at the back of the camera the hummingbird flew right into the frame in perfect focus and exposure and in exactly the position in which I hoped to capture it. Before I could get my finger to the shutter release it was gone !! I could not believe my bad luck. After that, several hours, spread out over a couple of days, of having the camera in auto-capture mode produced zero results. I gave up.
The morning after deciding to suspend my auto-capture project, I was at my desk and, out the window, I observed a couple of birds engaging in some strange behaviour high on a white pine. I got my Z8 with the 160-600 mm lens and went to my front door to take some handheld pictures. The birds were too far away to get any good shots. Before I went back into the house, my attention turned wistfully to the Bugloss which had been the scene of my photographic defeat. I wondered if I was far enough from the Bugloss to focus on it with my long lens. So, I pointed my camera to it and began trying to focus on the Bugloss. The very first thing I saw through my finder when the image came into focus became the picture you see above.
The hummingbird gave me a second chance at exactly the image I had missed a couple of days earlier!!