Following on from previous threads on digital cameras, I've been coming
to grips with my new camera, bought at least partially on the basis of
its 8x optical zoom.
On its first outing, I managed to get some reasonable shots of the
laughing gull on Bribie, with the main hassle keeping the bird in the
frame at extreme magnification.
In subsequent outings, I have found the autofocus to be useless on
pelagic trips, as it is unable to lock onto fast moving birds over
water. Using the manual focus isn't particularly easy, as the focusing
screen isn't that clear at high magnification nor is the focus that
obvious. The other gripe is that the camera goes into sleep mode after
30 secs of inaction, which is a pain when you are waiting for the
petrels to hove into a photographic position [nothing more frustrating
than the viewfinder going blank just as the bird is coming into
position - and you lose 2 secs while the camera wakes up].
That said, I got some reasonable shots of the shearwater rafts and the
gould's petrel [tick] on Saturday's Southport pelagic [and a
recognisable shot of the tahiti petrel as well].
Photographing the cuckoos at Dayboro yesterday was a bit easier, but I
still had some focus problems. The humourous thing is that the first
bird I saw when I got to Apex Pk was a classic grey oriental cuckoo
[tick], which promptly disappeared as I pulled the camera out. The
fan-tailed and horsfield's cuckoos were most obliging and allowed
photographs from a reasonable distance.
The cuckoos were picking up the grubs from a couple of different
locations, and the question I would like answered, is how many grubs
does it take to fill a cuckoo's stomach?? They certainly seem to be
able to pack them in.
Regards, Laurie.
Birding-Aus is on the Web at
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