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Tall Larkspur (Delphinium exaltatum)
Last Thursday, July 20, I had the chance to commune with hummingbird clearwing moths in a beautiful Adams County, Ohio, prairie. A botanical highlight was dozens of elegant Tall Larkspurs (Delphinium exaltatum). The hummingbird clearwing moths love Tall Larkspur, and it didn't take long for action to occur. I was able to get lots of images of both Hummingbird Clearwing Moths (Hemaris thysbe) and Snowberry Clearwing Moths (H. diffinis) at the larkspur, and also Wild Bergamot (Monarda fistulosa).
As always, click the image to enlarge
While photographing the plant is not such hard work, shooting the moths is. At full tilt, hummingbird clearwing moths can beat their wings 85 times a second! That's faster than a Ruby-throated Hummingbird normally flaps its appendages. To make this image - and nearly all others that I took this day - I used a Gitzo tripod, just as I would for birds. My artillery was the amazing Canon R5 mounted to the Canon 400mm f/2.8II. The settings for this shot were f/7.1, 1/4000 shutter speed, and ISO 6400. The latter parameter is most bothersome to me, as I normally do everything possible to shoot at much lower ISO ranges. However, I did not use flash for this shot, and such blazingly fast shutter speeds necessitates much higher ISO settings.
I did play around with flash, using a Better Beamer with its fresnel lens to throw light much farther afield. That worked pretty well, too, but I probably prefer the flashless look. Also, as it takes a second or so for the flash to recycle for the next shot, I couldn't shoot in high-speed burst mode. Without flash I could machine gun fire at up to 20 frames a second, offering a much greater chance of capturing a particularly pleasing wing position and overall posture.
Fortunately, cameras are getting much better at dealing with the noise caused by high ISO, and programs like Topaz Denoise do an amazing job in reducing ISO noise in post-processing.