Well I've been making progress on that transformation. Most importantly, I got a new camera about 2 weeks ago. But I haven't really been digiscoping with it much except for today. I had gone out with it twice before but the rain kept the camera in my pocket and the birds out of sight, for the most part.
But today was sunny and I was eager to get out.
What I really like about the new camera (Canon s95, by the way) is that you can adjust the evaluative metering (exposure) and the screen will show you the result before you even take the picture. I find that much more convenient for comparing and optimizing exposure rather than taking a bunch of photos and seeing which one is the best. I guess that's one obvious benefit of not using a viewfinder.
And the designers made the exposure adjustment really user friendly. Actually it's easier to adjust the exposure than the aperture, in my opinion!
You're probably sick of this White-throated Dipper by now. It's the exact same bird in pretty much the exact same spot and I keep showing you damn photos of it!!!
But I like him/her because it's patient and so stands around waiting for me to finish taking photos! The only problem is that he likes hanging around dark areas so the camera ends up shooting at a low shutter speed. Next time I'll play around with the ISO and improve the results... and show them to you so that I can annoy you some more :)
Another good thing about moving on to digiscoping is that I have been taking the time to photograph common birds, which I otherwise would have ignored. I came across a small flock of Bramblings and Chaffinches. From experience I know that they tend to sit around for a while (very un-passerine like) which would be good for me to try and take photos of them.
So this Chaffinch was being really tolerant and sat around for several minutes. The only problem was that I couldn't find an angle where there wasn't a stick in front of him:
Eventually I tried going closer, lowered the scope and got to this angle, just in time because he starting preening himself:
And this is my favourite photo by far:
I'm really looking forward to improving my digiscoping and I'll try to document my progress on this blog to help others learn as well :)
More on the setup and other things I've learned so far in another posting!
