Nikon D90 and Photographing Hummingbirds!

See Larger Photo Here

I got a few questions from people asking how i got this photo, so i thought I'd explain my set up!

I picked up a hummingbird feeder at the store and set it up in a tree in my backyard so it was hanging just off my deck behind our BBQ. I used the big BBQ as a kind of blind I could sit behind.

I set up the tripod and placed the d90 on it and focused on the hummimgbird feeder so I would be close to focus when the hummer arrived to feed. I set my camera to shutter speed and dialed in 1/2500 exposure. Aperture was set on F5.6. Focal length with the nikon 70-300mm vr lens was 250mm with VR off.

I set my metering to center-weighted average and auto-focus to Dynamic Area. ISO was at 800 so I could get the faster shutter speed without the picture being to dark. Even at ISO 800 I still had to bump up the exposure compensation to +2 to get more light. That seemed to work best.

My white balance was set manual to sunny but I'm sure auto would have worked fine.
For over 3 days I played with different setting and my speedflash (SB600) trying to find what worked best for me and these setting I used for this photo seemed to be the best.

It was fun capturing these little guys coming into feed i hope you give it a try and post your best shot so we can all see.