Call it Christmas in July one week late. (Orthodox Christmas in July?)
I got jealous of looking at the great photos of birds being posted by Richard of At The Water and Shellmo at Birding in Michigan . (Although, Shellmo has gone through a bit of a Looney period lately! You’ll have to visit to see what I mean.) My buddy Gary takes some mean photo’s too. (Go take a look at the Gallery on the Tiadaghton Audubon Society website —which Gary maintains—to see some of his pictures.
I’ve gotten a little bored with the same old birds and haven’t been hauling my digiscoping gear out to the field when we go because I find it somewhat cumbersome. I’ve two 35mm Canon cameras and lenses but instant gratification is the wave of the present and future. My small point-and-shoot Canon PowerShot S40 has been a workhorse for several years but it just can’t reach out and touch that distant (more than 10 feet away) bird. So I read back on Richard’s blog and checked a few other sources to see what equipment they were using. Then I did some homework and researched comparable models of Nikon, Canon, and Sony. These were the “preferred” camera models for some folks online and in Tiadaghton Audubon Society, the group to which I belong. (Besides the Canon PowerShot, I’ve a Nikon CoolPix P1 attached to my Nikon Fieldscope ED III-A for digiscoping.)
Turns out that the Sony Alpha 350 with a pair of Tamron lenses, some filters, an extra battery and a memory card were the best buy and had far better features (thanks Richard!). I didn’t order right away. I sat on the information and pondered the economics (NOT cheap!) and finally broke down and ordered everything through Amazon.
There were five separate orders and three arrived in today’s mail. The post office had the camera, battery, and memory card. UPS is supposed to deliver the lenses this afternoon and the filters should be arriving via the post office either Saturday or Monday.
While I’m waiting for the lenses to arrive, I’m charging up the battery and reading the manual.
My daughter would tell you that last is a lie—I never read the manual! But that was when she was living in the house. New car? Jess what’s the manual say? New computer? Jess, how does this thing work; what can it do? And she would know because she would have read and memorized he darn thing on the way home from the seller! Come to think about it, the Tundra is nearly a year old and I still haven’t read its owner’s manual. Jess, when you coming to visit?
Have I mentioned I HATE WAITING! (That's why DSLR was the only option!)
2 comments:
Now you're going to have to go back on my blog and figure out how to post really BIG pictures. If you need help on blog or camera, email me and I'll try to help out.
I have a new camera on my want list..my Kodak takes good pictures but te zoom is only a 2.5 and that as you say is just not enough to get a decent shot of that Ladderback pecker wood who hangs out in the top of a Pine tree about 70 feet tall.
Also have some tweety birds of some kind that are smaller than a chickadee..grey and white striped back..wild little critters and I can't get close enough to them when they are on the feeders to get a good picture
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