If you were a small rodent such as a mouse or a ground squirrel, that’s exactly the title you might reasonably give to this photo of a Red-tailed Hawk that I digiscoped by Coon Point on Sauvie Island, Oregon a few weeks ago. (more…)
Strolling through the maze of displays erected in the Sands Exhibition Center, I turned a corner and suddenly there in front of me was the Carl Zeiss exhibit. Always effective at spotlighting their new products, it didn’t take long for me to clearly see that one of the new products of which Zeiss was most proud was their new Victory DiaScope product line. (more…)
Having gotten caught up on all my writing and my lovely wife needing to use the computer, I pulled on my official RSPB Pulborough Brooks Reserve fleece, grabbed my digiscoping rig, and headed out toward the Dike Road in Scappoose to do a bit of a digiscoping workout. As the weather was cool and dry after a few solid days of rain, the birds were plentiful. However as the sky was still overcast, the light was a little less than ideal. Nevertheless, I’m rather pleased with some of the images I managed to record. (more…)
On the eighth day of Christmas, Mother Nature gave to me – a regatta of Trumpeter Swans a swimming (well, that is the venereal noun for a group of swimming swans). The only problem was that they were swimming in a flooded farm field alongside a busy rural highway so that the only location to set up the tripod for a little digiscoping was on a soft, gravel shoulder between the road and the railroad tracks. After that it was all private land separating me from the birds by a few hundred meters. (more…)
Just because Christmas is approaching fast doesn’t mean that you don’t have time to get that aspiring digiscoper on your list the gift that will truly make their “season bright.” (more…)
The results are in and Steve Berliner’s photo of a Pileated Woodpecker has been honored as the number one image in the Swarovski / Bird Watcher’s Digest 2009 Digiscoper of the Year competition. In addition, I am extraordinarily pleased to report that yours truly has also been honored by having my own photo of a Double-crested Cormorant selected as one of the other members of the winner’s circle. The details beyond this are still being collected and will be reported at length once all the information has been gathered.
While sorting some image files on my laptop, I found this one of two Semipalmated Plovers, Charadrius semipalmatus, that I digiscoped during a visit to the barrier islands off Chatham, Massachusetts using the first Swarovski spotting scope (a borrowed one) that I ever carried out into the field. Recalling that, I suddenly realized that I had yet to publish a reminder to Born Again Bird Watcher readers that the deadline for submitting their own digiscoped images to the Swarovski Digiscoper of the Year competition is October 31, 2009. So if you have a digiscoped image of which you are particularly proud, now’s the time to upload it on the contest’s website. With no entry fee and a first prize of fame, glory, and a Swarovski 32mm EL binocular, what have you got to lose?
Equipment:
Swarovski ATS 80 HD spotting scope
Swarovski 20-60x eyepiece
Swarovski DCB adapter
Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS
Settings:
F-stop: f/3.5
Exposure time: 1/320 sec.
ISO speed: ISO-80
Exposure bias: 0 step
As promised in my recent “Digiscoping with a DSLR Camera” entry, I have news to report regarding lens effectiveness for digiscoping using the Canon EOS 40D DSLR camera and Swarovski’s UCA. When we last left off, I had noted that the Canon EF 35mm f/2.0 lens might hold some promise as possibly being a lens with a completely internal focusing mechanism, thus making it a contender for a suitable lens for close positioning to the spotting scope’s eyepiece. Sadly, the promised was dashed when, thanks to the great patience of the staff at Pro Photo Supply, I was able to examine the combination in person and discover that the 35mm is not in fact an internal focusing lens. (more…)
While the benefits of intra-ocular lens replacement surgery (commonly performed to correct cataracts) are significant – astonishingly sharp color perception, 20/20 or approximate vision – one minor draw-back from it is the loss of close focus vision. In my own case, even with the fact that the lenses implanted into my eyes are flexible and allow me to adjust for distance focusing nearly as well as I did with my original lenses, since the surgery I have had difficulty reading small print or distinguishing fine details in anything closer to my eyes than twelve to eighteen inches away (depending upon what specifically I’m viewing). Because of this, I carry “cheaters,” low magnification level reading glasses, on a cord around my neck for easy accessibility when close examination of anything is required. (more…)
Visit most any marina along the Pacific coast of the United States and you will more than likely find two groups of birds to be ubiquitous – gulls and ducks. Thus whenever one sets out to do a little photography of either one of these two groups, a few opportunistic images of the other will more than likely find their way onto the camera’s memory card. So it was with me whilst recently digiscoping the Western and California Gulls gathered at the West Mooring Basin in Astoria, Oregon. Try as I might to focus my attention on the white and grey shapes of the gulls resting on the algae-covered pilings just off-shore, I couldn’t help but occasionally notice movement from one of the chestnut brown ducks paddling along the Columbia River’s gently lapping waters. It was during one of of these occasional diverting glances that I first took note of a particular duck that differed from all the others.
