Thursday, January 14, 2010

What Camera?

cassie asked me what camera I was using to take my bird pictures. I asked that very question of Richard At the Water about a year ago. Following his advice I went and purchased a Sony Alpha 350 and two Tamron lenses a 28-80mm and a 70-300mm, which came as a set.

The camera has digital zooming capabilities which extend the 300mm lens to 600mm equivalent.

When shooting birds on the deck from inside the house, I'm between five and ten feet from them. At 600mm I can see what they're thinking.

I've also got a digiscoping setup modeled after one my local birding buddy, Gary, uses. It's a Nikon Fieldscope ED III-A with a wide angle 30x eyepiece and a Nikon CoolPix P1 digital camera. I've actually moved away from using the digiscope because the camera is woefully underpowered. It requires manual focusing and takes several seconds to download the picture to disk. The Sony Alpha 350 is a motorized auto focus and is ready to shoot again as soon as I can click the button. (Interestingly enough, after seeing me using the SLR on a couple of occasions, Gary went out and got himself a Nikon SLR.) While the digiscope is great for birds that are relatively stationary (a nesting or roosting bird), slow moving (ducks and geese on the water), wading egrets and herons) or coming to one particular spot (such as a hummingbird to a feeder) the SLR and long lens allows you to capture birds in the field more easily.

I'd like to get a real macro lens ad, perhaps a 500mm lens like RIchard is playing with right now, but this "keeping up with the Joneses (and Smiths, Browns, etc.) can get pretty expensive!

******

And cassie, Hogwarts is the magic academy one Mr. Harry Potter attends. Birds (mostly owls) are their method of sending messages back to the folks at home, among others.


No comments: