Although this is very late, I must congratulate Bob on the informative
articles on digital photography.
Bob and I use the same brand and model of digital camera and often discuss
things by phone. We generally approach matters from two different
perspectives. Bob has been photographing birds for some time using a 35 mm
camera and a digital video before he ventured into digital still cameras. I
have not used a camera at all for many years (and only took a few bird
pictures when I did use one) and have jumped straight into the digital still
area. My naivety and Bob's experience enable us to look at some of the
problems from two directions.
There are two areas I wish to comment on. One is the use of a GOOD photo
editing program. I have tried a number of programs but have finally settled
on Photoshop for my editing. As a novice, I was reluctant to use the
"professional" program, at first. I can assure all of you that to obtain
the best pictures consistently, a photo editing program is essential and if
you can afford it, try Photoshop.
The second area is the use of digital magnification. The camera we use has
10X optical zoom and 2.7X digital zoom. Combining these gives the
equivalent of (approx) a 1100 mm lens - just great for wildlife. Except
that using digital zoom is a waste.of time if you require good quality
photos. I solved the problem by finding a good quality teleconverter lens
(Ricoh) from a video. This cost me $80 at a pawn brokers. It is a 2X lens
and I find that I can use that and then enlarge the photo to 200% using
Photoshop without losing any detail. This gives better magnification with
better quality than using the digital zoom.
If you just want a photo to confirm your id without requiring the quality
that a submission to the BARC requires, you can still use the digital zoom
as well giving an equivalent lens size of over 2000 mm and then magnify it
in Photoshop, but don't expect anything suitable for printing.
Just a few thoughts which I have already exchanged with Bob.
Terry Pacey
Birding-Aus is on the Web at
www.shc.melb.catholic.edu.au/home/birding/index.html
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