John & Maria's Photography Pages

An encounter with Hummingbird hawk-moths

Years ago - September 2013 to be precise - I took one, very lucky, shot of a Hummingbird hawk-moth, Macroglossum stellatarum,  Here's the shot:

Lucky in the sense that I was photographing this Ceratostigma willmottianum in my garden and the moth appeared, paused briefly to drink nectar, and then flew off, giving me time for only the one shot.  Lucky in that I had the Sigma 105mm macro on my, at the time, Canon 60D.  Lucky in that I was working at ISO 400, f6.3, and 1/200 sec and I somehow managed to get the eye, flower and proboscis reasonably sharp.  

Unfortunately everything else was blurred.  No wonder it's never sold.

I've seen these occasional UK summer migrant moths a few times since but never again managed to successfully photograph them.  Until last Monday.

I was working at The Garden House, collecting my usual social media shots.  I'd temporarily fitted the 100-400mm to the OM-1 to capture some nesting Jackdaws in the roof space of the old bothy behind the Walled Garden. I had bird detect on, continuous autofocus and sequential shooting set, ISO 1600 selected and the lens wide open at f6.3, giving a shutter speed between 1/000 and 2/1000 sec.  I happened to be near a patch of Nepeta (catmint) when a Hummingbird hawk-moth came to feed.

And then the fun began.  

Like hummingbirds these little moths flit about in unpredictable direction, wings blurred with the speed of their motion, briefly hovering in front of a flower to insert their long proboscis and drink the nectar.  Above all, they never settle while feeding.  Blink and they're gone.  Surely the harshest test of an autofocus system possible.  I had a lot of failures.  As evidenced by these three shots:

At first sight they look quite reasonable (I've cropped the images to square format only to cut out some extraneous content at the sides)  Now look at a 100% crop of the last image.

Not quite the success it appeared to be on first examination.  The swift, unpredictable, darting flight was producing real problems in attaining and keeping focus on the moth.  The others are slightly better but they've still missed focus.

But gradually, and aided by the arrival of a second moth*, I started getting a few better shots.

Sharper, more detailed and, most importantly, with better focus accuracy.  There's still the problem of wing blur but I didn't have enough light to raise the shutter speed to further freeze motion.  

In the end I finished with 3 shots I was reasonably happy with, and another shot (#1 in the final sequence) that was passable out of 46 in total.  The 100-400mm autofocus is just fast enough for the job though I suspect the PRO series lenses such as my 40-150mm might have been a bit faster and more capable of holding focus.  But you work with what you've got and an unpredictable small insect in flight would test any camera and lens combination.

An enjoyable experience.  I'd have continued but the moths took off for pastures anew and I didn't see them again.

* How do I know there were two moths?  Look at the backs.  One is fully covered, one distinctly worn where the scales have been rubbed away.