Olive-backed Sunbirds (Patreon)

Sony A1 + FE 100-400 F4.5-5.6 GM OSS

1/1000 or 1/500 second at Maximum Aperture.

Focus Area reduced from Zone to AF Tracking: Expand Flexible Spot as Bird Eye AF was sometimes dropping out.

This pair of wild Sunbirds were frequent visitors to the flowers in the garden of my accomodation in Port Douglas in tropical Far-North Queensland.

I was split between using my Portrait Settings and my Action settings but settled on my Action settings. Catching them in flight, however, proved impossible for these fast moving birds (blink and they were gone) and even when perching they were never completely still. I slowed my ISO Auto Min SS from 1/2000 second to 1/1000 second to keep the ISO below 8000 and occasionally pressed the AEL button to access  my Recall Custom Hold setting to slow the shutter speed (set to 1/500 second).

The yellow breasts of these birds are a very intense and some careful editing is required to keep the colour within the gamut of the monitor that you are probably using to view these images. Raise the contrast, saturation or vibrance too much in post production editing and the colours can easily be pushed out-of-gamut  rendering the yellow breasts a featureless flat colour.

If Premium Patrons want to know more about editing saturated colours, so that they can be viewed or printed with rich detail, be sure to check out my Colour Management eBook from the eBooks section of this Patreon support service.