Project 365: Feb 22, 2008

Red-tailed Hawk, far off across the golf course sitting on the tee house. Digiscoped with my spotting scope and point-n-shoot camera.

I think I need a better point-n-shoot camera, or at least one that has a better track record with digiscoping. I'm displeased with the results from this one, though I do like it for standard snapshots.

Digiscoping for Beginners

Stokes Birding Blog has a great little digiscoping tutorial for beginners. I sure wish I'd have had this when I started digiscoping! It's all basic stuff, but it includes photos and explains the process well. I had to visit 10 different web sites and piece together info from this one and that to figure out this much!

Digiscoping: Beginner Tips

The Digiscope Setup

Santa brought me a spotting scope and camera adapter for Christmas :) w00t!

There haven't been many birds out today to test it out, but I did get a few shots this morning. Here's a female house finch:



These small birds fill about half the frame with the magnification of the spotting scope, versus maybe 1/10th of the frame with my 300mm Canon lens. I think the shots are likely more crisp out of the 300mm lens, but with the extreme cropping required for close-ups, distortion occurs. It's nice to be able to preserve most of the detail of the shot even after cropping by using the digiscope setup.

I need to do some research on the best camera settings when using a scope. I'm currently using aperture priority mode, so that the camera chooses the correct shutter speed. The aperture shows as 00 on the camera, and of course it is manual focus as no lens is attached to the camera. Focusing is done via the scope.

The camera attaches to the scope via a camera adapter and a T-ring in place of the camera lens.

It's a little awkward trying to look downward into the camera viewfinder. I can see why people have said that it's easier to digiscope with a point-n-shoot camera, particularly one with the flip-out rotating LCD screen for those odd angles. I bought that adapter for the scope, too, and will try it with my Canon Powershot A70.

For working indoors (shooting through the window), I think the dSLR setup is OK. It's probably a bit clumsy in the field, but I'll have to try it. The point-n-shoot setup will likely be easier for field shooting.

The pictures I've taken so far have tended toward over-exposed. I'm shooting in RAW, so fixing that is simple in Adobe Lightroom, but I'd like to figure out how to get it right in-camera. Unfortunately, there are no test subjects in my tree right now, as landscapers are outside doing who-knows-what, scaring the birds away.

I'm very encouraged by the shots I've been able to get so far! It will take some practice to learn to maneuver the scope on the tripod (I also see now why all of the photography books I read encouraged spending money on a good ball-head tripod... my $35 3-way pan head is hideously clumsy and difficult to maneuver. It's fine for taking family portraits, but very difficult to use when trying to follow a bird moving around in a tree). A good tripod will likely be my next semi-major purchase.

Birds in Motion

"Hey there, rabbit."

Anyone recognize that from the movie, "Before Sunrise?" One of my favorite movies of all time.



Found a bunny checking out my yard this morning, which was fun because there weren't a whole lotta birds out today - maybe because the snow and ice had been melting overnight. Today was warm too (I think it might have hit 40 degrees!) Maybe that's why the birds were hardly around this morning. Mr. Rabbit was in my yard when I got home from work tonight too - he seems to visit at night between 11p and midnight. I've seen him a few times. I threw some bread scraps out there for him, as well as the rest of a 2 day old apple that the starlings didn't finish up. Do rabbits like apples?

Got a photo that would have been cooler if a) I had a longer telephoto lens and b) I could have gotten the focus right.



This hawk was on the far bank of the pond in my back yard. This photo is cropped to insane proportions (thus my wish for a lens longer than 300mm) and is over-sharpened (thus my wish for having gotten the focus right). I had the camera on the tripod, aiming out my window at the hawk because my arms were too tired holding up the camera, and he was sitting on the shoreline for a LONG time - maybe half an hour! I really wanted to get a shot of him taking off to fly, so I sat patiently with the camera mounted on the tripod, holding the remote shutter cable. I got my shot, but I had a very shallow depth of field (another "learned my lesson for next time") and the hawk flew out of the plane of my preset focus.

Can't wait for the digiscope setup. :) I could have gotten a wicked close up of the hawk, I bet (though I don't think it would have helped with the flying shot. I hear that there's very little margin for movement when shooting photos through a spotting scope without getting awful blur). The anticipation of all that could be is killing me!!

I need a NaNoWriMo for photography

There are NaNoWriMo posts all over the blogosphere as the shoestring writers of the world work on their novels. (It's National Novel Writing Month). I need a NaNoWriMo for photography. I need some sort of challenge - a deadline. A goal.

I registered for the Intro to B/W Photography class at the college I teach at. (We can take courses for free, and I've decided to try and complete the photography certificate). It starts in January. I'm also taking meteorology. I'd like to do some weather photography. I suppose I'll have homework and deadlines soon enough! It's a film photography class with a darkroom component. I'm looking forward to really absorbing the truths of exposure.

I think I'm getting a digiscope and the SLR camera adapter for Christmas, which will give me new ways to get out and take pictures of birds. I hear that some owls hang out around here through the winter. I've never seen an owl in the wild, so that's one of my winter photography goals (to get a photo of an owl). I can't wait for the spring migration to see what kinds of birds I find!

Winter weather really zaps my motivation to get outside and shoot. :-/

Digiscoping

Oh, how I love reading the posts and looking at the pictures on birdchick.com! Sharon does this thing called "digiscoping." It's like the next step for photographers who specialize in bird photography. Yeah, my 300mm telephoto is a nice lens, but I've been most happy with shooting "larger" wildlife with it, such as my trips to the zoo. It's tough to get close enough to a bird to get a sharp, frame-filling photo of just BIRD. I'd look at the pictures on birdchick.com and think, how on earth does she do it? What kind of camera does she use?

Well, it's not the camera, really. She attaches her camera to a spotting scope, a special kind of telescope. Digiscoping is the process of taking digital photos through a spotting scope.

To give an idea of the magnification, my camera lens zooms to 300mm. A spotting scope can achieve zooms up to 6,900mm. No wonder she can get so close up!

Sharon's digiscoping setup currently costs about $3,000. Oy. I'm sure it can be done more cheaply (as she says her equipment was top of the line when she bought it), though like cameras and lenses, it seems the advice on the street is buy the best one you can afford.

Someday! :)

It looks like a basic digiscoping setup can be had for under $500. I probably wouldn't know the difference! After googling around a bit...

A non-high-def digiscoping setup that would work with my camera, turning the digiscope into a telephoto lens: $370 + tax. This consists of:

• Zhumell 20-60x 80mm Spotting Scope (fogproof and waterproof) - $299
  
• Camera adapter for the 80mm Spotting Scope (to enable to scope to be used as a telephoto lens) - $49
• T-ring mount for Canon EOS cameras (to attach the camera adapter) - $17

Maybe I'll get a nice tax return this year and can get a digiscope in time for spring bird migration!!!