 This post focuses on a single species, the Rufous Hummingbird, with a special section in the second half just for all you photo geeks out there who want to learn more about using fill flash for your hummer photography at shutter speeds up to 1/8000th second, also know as "High Speed Sync (HSS)." (If you love birds, but not cameras, don't quit in the middle, there are lots of fun photos in second half!) Rufous Hummingbirds are feisty long distance migrants who make a regular stop on Mt. Lemmon in the summer and fall. Every spring they fly from their wintering grounds in southern Mexico or the gulf coast all the way north to the Pacific Northwest (2700 miles one way), or western Canada and Alaska (up to 4,000 miles) for breeding, then back again! We see them on their way south. The image above was captured in Summerhaven on August 23, 2025. We see three females or immature males creating a bit of a ruckus at a nectar feeder. Every summer the males are the first to migrate south, arriving in Summerhaven in early July, followed by females and immature males. By early September the gang has moved south into Mexico. Below, a picture of a male Rufous captured on March 16, 2018 at Battiste Bed, Breakfast and Birds in Hereford, Arizona. Tony and Julie Battiste run a fantastic B&B with a large backyard feeding/viewing area, including a photo blind. This Rufous male was on his way north to breed, and stopped to get breakfast at their feeders. Male Rufous are orange on the back and belly, with with a mix of white on the throat and a vivid iridescent-red gorget that varies in color and intensity depending on the angle of the light.  Canon 7D Mk II with EF 100-400mm with 1.x Mk III extender at 560 mm, 1/250 sec, F/8/0, ISO 400, +0.33 EV, flash fired.
 Canon 7D Mk II with EF 100-400mm with 1.x Mk III extender at 560 mm, 1/250 sec, F/8/0, ISO 400, +0.33 EV, flash fired. This shot was obtained at some distance with a Canon 580 EX II Speedlite with a Better Beamer attached to 7D Mk II. The photographs above and below show the variation in color of the gorget depending on the angle to the sun and in this case, my speedlite. In the absence of good light the gorget looks dark brown. For more on feather color and the physics of structural color in Hummingbirds, see David Allen Sibley, What It's Like To Be a Bird, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2020, p 77.  Canon 7D Mk II with EF 100-400mm with 1.x Mk III extender at 560 mm, 1/250 sec, F/5.6, ISO 400, +1 EV, flash fired. Below, a male Rufous in flight on Mt. Lemmon July 19, 2024.  Canon R5 Mk II, RF 100-500mm at 500mm, 1/2000 sec, f/7.1, ISO 20,000, no flash. Below, almost one year later to the day, a male Rufous in Summerhaven, one of the first to stop by on the long trek to Mexico.  Canon R5 Mk II, RF 100-500mm at 500mm, 1/2000 sec, f/6.3, ISO 1600, no flash. In the image below, a male Rufous later in the summer, August 31st, showing the rufous/orange back and edges of the gorget visible as he turns his head to the left.  Canon R5 Mk II, RF 100-500mm at 428mm, 1/4000 sec, f/7.1, ISO 3200, flash fired in HSS mode. Below, a female or immature male Rufous on August 23rd. The female has a green back and a speckled gorget, often with a small spot in the middle. Immature males have a similar appearance, with the small spot over time turning into the mature male gorget.  Canon R5 Mk II, RF 100-500mm at 400mm, 1/2000 sec, f/8, ISO 3200, +0 EV, flash fired in HSS mode. Below, a female in flight, July 22, 2023. The back is a speckled green.  Canon R7, RF 100-500mm at 223 mm, 1/250 sec, f/8.0, ISO 1250, +0 EV, flash fired. Note that at 1/250 sec. with flash the head and eye are sharp with blurring of the wings. Rufous Hummingbirds are very aggressive at feeders, both with other species and with their own. Below we see what appears to be three females/immature males facing off near a feeder, with two other birds perched on the tray. This is a wider angle view of the image that leads this post.  Canon R5 Mk II, RF 100-500mm at 400mm, 1/2000 sec, f/8, ISO 3200, +0 EV, no flash. One Rufous, often a male, may work to dominate several adjacent feeders at the same time, claiming them as "his" and shooing off other hummers. The only species I have seen that ignores the Rufous is the Rivoli's Hummingbird, one of the largest hummers in North America, and clearly bigger than a Rufous. Below, from July 29, 2020, a Rivoli's Hummingbird sitting on the left at the nectar feeder, with an immature male Rufous gingerly landing on the opposite side. This is one of ~10 images that showed the young Rufous circling and approaching the Rivoli's, while the larger and clearly more dominant Rivoli just sat and drank, ignoring the Rufous.  Canon 7D Mk II, EF 100-400mm at 188mm, 1/2000 sec, f/5.0, ISO 4000, +1 EV, no flash.  Canon R5 Mk II, RF 100-500mm at 400mm, 1/2500 sec, f/8, ISO 10000, +0.67 EV, no flash. Above and below, competition between Rufous over the feeder. You need a lot of calories to fly ~5,000 to 6,000 miles a year. Staking out and defending food sources along the way is essential.  Canon R5 Mk II, RF 100-500mm at 254mm, 1/4000 sec, f/5.0, ISO 2500, +0.33 EV, no flash.  Canon R5 Mk II, RF 100-500mm at 400mm, 1/2500 sec, f/8, ISO 10000, +0.67 EV, no flash. Below, two females in close combat. The bird on the left has closed her right eye to protect it from the incoming bill, while her bill is clearly into the feathers on her opponent's gorget.  Canon R5 Mk II, RF 100-500mm at 343mm, 1/4000 sec, f/6.3, ISO 3200, +0 EV, flash fired in HSS mode. Fill flash brought out details and created a highlight off of the eye of the bird on the right. For the photo-geeks: As promised in the intro, here is more on the use of fill-flash for hummingbird photography using high-speed sync, or HSS. If you are not a photo-nut, don't leave now, the images that follow show more fun hummer aerobatics! Back in the day of mechanical shutters, one could not use flash, even with high tech strobes, with shutter speeds over ~1/250 second. If you could, the shutter would not synchronize with the flash burst, resulting in only portions of the frame being illuminated. This restriction made the use of fill flash, putting in just enough light to "fill in" darker portions of the photo, difficult for fast moving objects. I have used fill flash for hummingbirds at shutter speeds of 1/200 second, and if the bird was hovering in a stable position, I could get the eye and bill sharp, with blurring of the wings, which can look really cool. However, if the bird was darting here and there, which is often the case, everything gets blurred. I recently discovered that high speed sync was introduced in 1995, but it has taken me 30 years to discover it. (Only the newest, hottest stuff on this blog!) Oh well . . . In all fairness, it took the advent of electronic shutters ~ 7 years ago, to make HSS more practical. And for action photography, it took stacked sensors and rapid readout to minimize rolling shutter on electronic shutters, necessary for high speed subjects like race cars and hummingbirds. So, the manufacturers are now able to pair their speedlites (strobes) with their cameras to create a burst of rapid flashes that allows the photographer to use higher shutter speeds with flash and get even and predictable light on the subject, with minimal rolling shutter. The image above, and the ones below, as well as a few in the preceding section, were all taken with a Canon R5 Mark II with a 580 EX II Speedlite set to HSS.  Canon R5 Mk II, RF 100-500mm at 400mm, 1/2000 sec, f/8, ISO 3200, +0 EV, flash fired in HSS mode. In regard to set up, I can only speak to my Canon gear. Note that HSS is available in several other brands. For a Canon R5 Mk II, first put a compatible speedlite on the camera. I have an aging 580 EX II, and it works. Turn on the speedlite. Turn on the camera, then go to the Red Menu (little camera icon) , second tab (2/9), and click on External Speedlite Control. Scroll down to Flash Function settings and click on it. You will see the screen below, left.
Select the box at the lower left (red on the screen) which takes you to the Shutter synchronization screen, above on the right. Click on the far right box, High-speed synchronization. A little High Sync icon lights up on the speedlite LCD screen (not shown). Note that the camera/speedlite combination stays in HSS mode even if both the speedlite and camera are turned off and then on again, but it loses the setting if the batteries of the speedlite are changed. If the batteries run low and you need to change them out for fresh ones, you will need to repeat the set up above.  Canon R5 Mk II, RF 100-500mm at 400mm, 1/2000 sec, f/8, ISO 3200, +0 EV, flash fired in HSS mode. Final steps: add a Better Beamer to the speedlite, set the speedlite in manual mode at ~1/15 power. I usually shoot at 1/2000 to 1/4000 second, hand held. Although I usually shoot birds in manual mode with the ISO on Automatic, for HSS I got more predictable results setting the ISO at a fixed value, in most cases between 2000 and 4000. Check your exposure and adjust settings as needed. On many of my usual hummer shots the birds are side-lit or back-lit, creating shadows that are hard to deal with. The speedlite with the Better Beamer puts just enough light on the bird to get the colors and feather detail to "pop" and add a highlight off of the eye.  Canon R5 Mk II, RF 100-500mm at 500mm, 1/2000 sec, f/8, ISO 2000, +0 EV, flash fired in HSS mode. This bird was lit mostly from behind. The flash filled in the chest and tail, and lit up the spot on the gorget. Below, a female/immature male coming in for a landing at the feeder. I love the landing pose; feet out, wings back, tailed flared and bill open just a smidge. The flash fills in the detail on the chest and throat, and adds a highlight to the eye. In fact, the bird appears to have two highlights, perhaps one from the flash and the other from incident light. Full disclosure: I did use the Remove tool in Lightroom to take out part of the nectar bottle in the upper right corner.  Canon R5 Mk II, RF 100-500mm at 400mm, 1/2000 sec, f/8, ISO 3200, +0 EV, flash fired in HSS mode.  Canon R5 Mk II, RF 100-500mm at 400mm, 1/2500 sec, f/8, ISO 6400, +0.33 EV, flash fired in HSS mode. Above and below, additional shots of the Rufous in flight competing for time at the feeder which was off frame to the right of these images. One remaining challange: Depth of field. In the image above the Canon R5 Mk II does a good job of locking onto the eye of the lower bird in the frame, but the upper bird is just out of the range of focus. I was shooting at f/8.0, and at f/11 or higher, I might have had both birds in focus. At high f-stops the depth of field increases, but there is less light hitting the sensor, so the ISO goes up. For the most part in 2025 high ISO's can be corrected for with post-production noise reduction software such as Topaz De Noise. For a great video on autofocus in Canon cameras, especially the R5 Mk II, see Rudy Winston and canon autofocus explained.  Canon R5 Mk II, RF 100-500mm at 500mm, 1/2000 sec, f/8, ISO 4000, +0 EV, flash fired in HSS mode. Below, likely a male on the upper left going after a female on the lower right. The flash adds color and detail, especially for feathers, like the red/orange in the male's gorget.  Canon R5 Mk II, RF 100-500mm at 451mm, 1/2000 sec, f/6.3, ISO 4000, +0 EV, flash fired in HSS mode. Below, two females/immature males face off. We may be seeing some rolling shutter in the wings of the bird on the left. My experience so far with the Canon R5 Mk II set on electronic shutter is that there is very minimal rolling shutter.  Canon R5 Mk II, RF 100-500mm at 400mm, 1/2000 sec, f/6.3, ISO 2000, +0 EV, flash fired in HSS mode. Below, more ruckus! The far bird is in focus.  Canon R5 Mk II, RF 100-500mm at 324mm, 1/4000 sec, f/6.3, ISO 4000, +0 EV, flash fired in HSS mode. Below, the closing shot. A female Rufous strikes a pose! The right eye is in focus with a catchlight. High-speed sync flash at 1/4000th second. Note: All images in this post processed in Adobe Lightroom Classic with noise reduction using Topaz DeNoise AI. Sharpening done as the last step.  Canon R5 Mk II, RF 100-500mm at 324mm, 1/4000 sec, f/6.3, ISO 4000, +0 EV, flash fired in HSS mode. Here is a link to hummingbird photography and HSS which I have found helpful: Ed Erkes Nature Photography, Different Ways to Photograph Hummingbirds, Part I That's all for now! Stay tuned, more coming soon! Happy trails!
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