It's been years since I took this photo. It represent the limits of what I have been able to do. I gave up and stopped taking hummingbird photos shortly after I took this one. I feel that the state of the art of commonly available cameras at that time limited my ability to do any better.

This photo was taken using a Sony A77II and a 300mm f/2.8 lens. I will not go into my techniques here; it's been covered elsewhere.

The two biggest problems that I had to overcome were:

1) Finding a camera with fast enough auto-focus.
2) Depth of field.

I stopped taking photos of this kind and have been waiting for cameras to get better. I have a Sony A99II on order in hopes that auto-focus will be even better than my A77II is. However, the A99II is full frame and this could reduce my depth of field even more. The 42.4MP of the A99II might allow me to get away with cropping out a smaller section of the image, effectively giving me a smaller format camera.

In this photo the flowers on the left are between the bird and the camera and are out of focus. The flowers in the background are also out of focus. I don't mind that. What bothers me is that birds right wing and the tip of it's beak are out of focus. I just need a little more DOF!

Recently I talked to a man who told me he was having problems maintaining DOF while photographing jewelry for a client. Another photographer solved the problem by getting further away from the subject and using a giant telephoto lens and a bellows. Maybe I could use a teleconverter and back away from the subject? I'm not sure if that will help?

The camera will not arrive until December. The birds will return in the spring. Any ideas?

It's been years since I took this photo. It represent the limits of what I have been able to do. I gave up and stopped taking hummingbird photos shortly after I took this one. I feel that the state of the art of commonly available cameras at that time limited my ability to do any better.

This photo was taken using a Sony A77II and a 300mm f/2.8 lens. I will not go into my techniques here; it's been covered elsewhere.

The two biggest problems that I had to overcome were:

1) Finding a camera with fast enough auto-focus.
2) Depth of field.

I stopped taking photos of this kind and have been waiting for cameras to get better. I have a Sony A99II on order in hopes that auto-focus will be even better than my A77II is. However, the A99II is full frame and this could reduce my depth of field even more. The 42.4MP of the A99II might allow me to get away with cropping out a smaller section of the image, effectively giving me a smaller format camera.

In this photo the flowers on the left are between the bird and the camera and are out of focus. The flowers in the background are also out of focus. I don't mind that. What bothers me is that birds right wing and the tip of it's beak are out of focus. I just need a little more DOF!

Recently I talked to a man who told me he was having problems maintaining DOF while photographing jewelry for a client. Another photographer solved the problem by getting further away from the subject and using a giant telephoto lens and a bellows. Maybe I could use a teleconverter and back away from the subject? I'm not sure if that will help?

The camera will not arrive until December. The birds will return in the spring. Any ideas?

Check out the Sony A6500. They're claiming the world's fastest auto focus. Another advantage with modern cameras is the better high ISO performance (higher ISO = smaller aperture for any given shutter speed).

http://petapixel.com/2016/10/06/sony-a6500-flagship-aps-c-camera-fastest-af-af-points/

Backing off does increase the distance to the focus point (the subject), but you can't then zoom in to return to the former framing because you lose the advantage (zooming = longer focal length). But if your sensor has a high pixel count you can shoot wider (either back off or use shorter focal length) and then crop. If the required amount of cropping is moderate, the loss of sharpness due to cropping should be minimal.