Recently a friend, Steve Cirone, who is one of the top bird, and nature photographers in the San Diego area turned me onto a book called "The Hummingbird Guide" by Linda Robbins". The author explains how to successfully photograph hummingbirds using multiple manual flashes. Steve knew that I liked photographing hummers, and also like off camera flash, so it resonated with me. Her method is to use a minimum 0f 5 to 6 strobes, a supplied background (which you have to provide), and photograph the birds in the shade so that you don't have to overpower the sunlight. When you use multiple strobes on a subject in the shade you can use lower power settings for each flash which results in shorter flash durations which means it freezes the wing blur.
Lighting stuff: Down below in the first comment, you can see a picture of the setup I used, with a total of 6 strobes and a hummingbird feeder. I used 5 Yongnuo strobes and another 3rd party manual flash for a total of 6 strobes. One strobe was pointed at the background, one was underneath the feeder, and the other 4 strobes surrounded the feeder. The strobes were all at about 1/16th power, and you can see the EXIF info on the side.
I've taken quite a few pictures of hummers over the years and put them an album creatively called Hummingbirds.
www.flickr.com/photos/9422878@N08/sets/72157627149575339/
