The wings of a hummingbird move incredibly fast. Even at 1/2000 of a second, they'll be blurry in most shots — you only freeze them when you catch that brief fraction of a second when the wings are changing direction. At 1/5000 they can still show motion. Natural light photography is always a compromise between shutter speed, ISO, and sharpness.
If you really want to freeze the wings completely, flash or photo strobes are the way to do it. I've done it a handful of times and the results are impressive — but I'll be honest, I still prefer the look of natural light for most of my hummingbird photos. The wing blur feels more alive to me. That said, frozen wings can produce a different kind of stunning shot, and it's worth understanding how to do it.
High Speed Action Mode
Not to be confused with high speed sync, high speed action mode is a feature some flash units have that produces an ultra-short burst of light designed to stop fast-moving objects — the same kind of effect you see in water-drop photography. Standard flash units and most studio strobes have a much longer flash duration that wouldn't be short enough to freeze hummingbird wings.
My setup uses two Paul C Buff Einstein strobes in action mode at near-minimum power output. I raise my ISO to 800 so I can shoot at f/11 for depth of field, with a 1/250 shutter speed using electronic first curtain. The goal is to keep the natural light far enough below the flash exposure that it doesn't introduce ghosting — more on that below.
Multi-Strobe / Speedlight Technique
Many Speedlights can also achieve very short flash durations — sometimes as short as 1/20,000 of a second — when set to their lowest power output. The catch is that at minimum power, you don't get much light, so you need several of them firing simultaneously to get a proper exposure.
The technique: set up three or more Speedlights all triggered at the same time, all at their lowest power setting. Together they give you enough light while each individual unit fires fast enough to freeze motion. Trigger them with a radio trigger system or optical slaves off a master flash. It's a budget-friendly alternative to purpose-built action strobes.
Ghost Images
If you don't sufficiently overpower the ambient light, you'll get ghost images — a blurry natural-light exposure layered on top of the sharp flash exposure. Most cameras have a flash sync speed between 1/60 and 1/250, and at those shutter speeds on a bright day with a wider aperture, the natural light can be close enough to your flash exposure to cause visible ghosting.
To avoid it, stop down your aperture, raise your shutter speed to the maximum sync speed your camera allows, and keep your ISO as low as practical. Shooting in open shade or on an overcast day also helps significantly.
Ghosting isn't always bad — I experimented with letting some natural light in to illuminate background plants while the strobe froze the bird. The results were interesting, but I prefer the cleaner look of a properly-lit background, which I get by positioning the feeder close to a tree so the strobes light up the leaves rather than leaving the background black.
One Shot at a Time
The other trade-off with flash is losing continuous drive mode. You have to fire one shot, wait for the strobes to recycle, and fire again. At or near minimum power the recycle time is usually under a second, so you can shoot fairly quickly — but it's still a different rhythm than spraying bursts in natural light and picking the best frame.
Flash Photography Gallery
All of these were shot at ISO 800, f/11, 1/250 with the two Einstein strobes in action mode. The second shot shows the simple two-strobe setup. The last shot shows an example of wing ghosting from ambient light.
