Birds in Lincolnshire

Digi-scoping

Digi-scoping: brilliant bird photographs at the touch of a button simply by sticking a digital camera onto the eyepiece of a scope or lots of blurred images of unidentifiable birds/trees/bushes/water! by Graham Catley

So why is it not as simple as putting the camera to the scope and taking an image that shows what you see when you look through the scope?

One of the main advantages of this type of bird photography is also one of its biggest disadvantages, magnification. With most digital cameras that are suitable for digi-scoping, you need to use the standard lens of the camera at its maximum, or near maximum, zoom position to remove vignetting when looking through the scope eyepiece. Vignetting is the darkened corners, which appear when the diameter of the lens and the eyepiece differ. The effect of using the camera lens at its maximum zoom produces a magnification of between 2 and 4 times in most cameras. Roughly this is then multiplied by the magnification of the scope eyepiece to give a resultant magnification of 50-75 times with a 20x or 30 scope eyepiece. Now this sounds brilliant and given ideal conditions being able to get a good sized image of a bird at 100 or 200m range is a real advantage over conventional photography where even with a 600mm lens you need to be within 20-40m of a medium sized bird for a good image. However, the down side of the increased magnification is a concomitant increase in camera shake and thus blurred images. Hand holding a digital camera against a scope can work if the light is very bright and you have a very steady hand and the bird is sat motionless but in most instances it is not so. How many bird photographers do you see hand holding a 600mm lens with a magnification of 12 times? So you really need some sort of a converter to hold the camera steady against the eyepiece and firms are making them and selling them for considerable sums of cash. So here is the first catch 22 situation. Having bought a digi camera and tried digi-scoping your results are hopeless so do you invest in a converter and shutter release and screen adapter at well over £100? Will your results be any better or will it just be another £100 and odd down the drain? Fortunately the camera I purchased was not the all singing most recent model but a Nikon Coolpix 880, now superseded by other models, which I received by default as part of a work related award. The body housing on this model has a circular projection around the lens, which by pure luck has virtually the same diameter as the eyepiece on my Swarovski scope. A bit of cutting and fixing engineered a plastic tube, which fits over the camera housing and the eyepiece and positions the lens of the camera the correct distance from the eyepiece glass. The tube is held together with some traditional insulation tape and although not perfect it holds the camera fairly steady and reduces the amount of shake.

Using a fixed adapter between the camera and scope also has its disadvantages. Finding a bird in the scope is sometimes difficult enough, especially in trees or dense bushes, but trying to find the same bird when looking at a small LCD screen on the back of a camera is much harder! Sunlight reflects on the screen and firms sell shades, again at a price, to compensate. Then of course there is the matter of focus. The combination focuses via the scope but the results are visible on the screen. If however, you are long sighted, like myself, but need glasses to read, then using a scope is easy but being able to see whether the image on the screen is in focus may require specs or standing back three feet! With a zoom eyepiece there is less depth of field than with a wide-angle and it is much easier to be just a fraction out of focus if the bird moves a couple of feet or even if it appears to be in focus on the screen. I always check the focus with the scope eyepiece if I have the chance for precise adjustment. If the bird moves any sort of distance it can be difficult getting back onto it with the camera fixed to the scope whereas I quickly take mine off and reposition and refocus with the scope itself then refit the camera which I find is usually more successful. With a fixed adapter this would be a less practical method. It does though result in the need to use only four hands in stead of five when trying to operate the camera, scope and tripod. With traditional photography it is usually possible to focus the telephoto lens with one hand and fire the shutter with the other while moving the combination on a fluid head tripod, locking it up if the subject is still. With a digi-scope combination you have to focus the scope, adjust the tripod head with the arm, lock it with two or more lock nuts then fire the camera shutter. It takes a lot of practice and as usually results in a lot of frustration and missed pictures at least to start with. Scopes are often not well-balanced on tripod heads and adding the weight of a camera and adapter can make the balance even worse so a strong tripod and good tripod head are essential.

Using my scope zoom eyepiece at anything over 30x usually results in far too much shake to make the images worthwhile and unless the bird is really very distant it is more practical to take a smaller image and enlarge it slightly on the computer. It is better to have a sharper image to start with than to try and sharpen a larger image. Even so though there are times when birds are very distant and a vital record shot may mean the difference between people believing you did see a Crab Plover at Toft Newton or not! As such a brilliant image may not be necessary as long as the bird is recognisable so 150 times magnification is always an option worth considering. The Ringed Plover image shown here was taken at 150x at a distance of about 400m, had it been a summer plumaged sand plover it would at least have proved it was a sand plover if not which species.

One last point to bear in mind is that digital cameras run on batteries and they use a lot of battery power. Re-chargeables are sold with many high spec cameras but even they do not last long when fully charged. My Nikon usually lasts about an hour to 90 minutes depending on outside temperatures so it is worth carrying a spare alkaline or if possible having two sets of rechargeables available if you intend doing a lot of digi-scoping at one session.

So much for the down side of all that magnification the advantages are obvious. You do not need to be anywhere near as close to a bird to obtain an acceptable image as you do with a conventional SLR and telephoto. This means that birds are often more relaxed and you can get images of them doing things that they often fail to do when being approached by a stalking photographer. The wing drying Cormorant, wing preening female Shoveler and the male Sparrowhawk shown here were all totally at ease with my presence as I was 100m away from them and not posing a threat. In 27 years of conventional photography I have never obtained a decent shot of a perched Sparrowhawk but with this digi-scope combination I have attained some decent images of a pretty shy species.

Sparrowhawk male Water’s Edge Barton preening and resting in the sun at a favoured roost site. © Graham Catley 2001- Digi-scoping combination Nikon Coolpix 880 and Swarovski scope.

Then there are the other bonuses. A digital camera is very small and light by comparison with traditional SLR’s and telephotos. I stopped carrying my camera with me many years ago due to its weight, in combination with a scope, tripod and bins, it was just too much on long walks and there were so many occasions when I went out and never had the opportunity to use it. Hence it stayed at home or in the car and came out only when something stayed put for enough hours or days to allow me to go back and get the camera. Of course there were lots of occasions when something did offer itself for photography and the camera was at home but that was the luck of the draw. No more; my digi camera now accompanies me all the time, it slots into my pocket, and the weight and bulk are negligible. If I come across a suitable subject I have the scope with me all the time and can quickly fit the camera and fire away.

Green Woodpecker Water’s Edge Barton a rare bird for the clay pits. © Graham Catley 2001- Digi-scoping combination Nikon Coolpix 880 and Swarovski scope.

Secondly the results are instant. You can see immediately on the screen just what you have photographed and can tell whether you need to take another shot of fifty to get what you want. If you feel like it you can go home, download the shots onto the computer print off anything you need or send it up to a web site within a few minutes it is that quick. As a user of Kodachrome slide film for 25 years the spontaneity of the digital results is amazing. No longer do I have to actually take 36 images, and usually throw 32 or more away, then wait anything up to 17 days to have them returned after processing the results are there immediately. OK they cannot be projected as easily as slides for a show but as soon as digital projectors come down in price then slides for me will be a thing of the past. And of course there is the cost. Even shopping at the most competitive sites Kodachrome 64 costs around £5-45 for a 36-exposure roll. Digital images of course are stored on cards and once downloaded onto a computer the card can be wiped clean and used over and over again at no extra cost. I have two cards a 16MB and a 32MB, which I use on fine quality each storing 50 and 100 images respectively. This means that I can take 150 pictures and even if only one is worth keeping I have lost nothing whereas four films would have cost around £22.

So what are my conclusions? Is digi-scoping the answer to all our bird photography problems or just another passing fad? Well for me it provides convenience, immediate results, and given the right conditions some brilliant results. I cannot however, see it being possible to digi-scope a fast moving warbler like a Pallas’s or to take good flight photos of most species so there is certainly still a place for conventional photo equipment. Digi-scoping is an alternative that offers several opportunities conventional photography just cannot produce. A selection of images I have taken in the last two months are shown with this article and others are on the web site. However, at the day’s end you only get out what you put in. Good photographs need patience, some skill, knowing your birds, knowing a bit about photography, having good light a co-operative subject and just occasionally a large slice of luck.

I hope I have not put anyone off trying digi-scoping the opportunities for getting excellent pictures are there to be had but do not be fooled it is not the easy option that it is oft portrayed as.

Photos:

Little Egret North Killingholme pits November 2001© Graham Catley 2001- Digi-scoping combination Nikon Coolpix 880 and Swarovski scope.

Gadwall male preening Water’s Edge Barton. © Graham Catley 2001- Digi-scoping combination Nikon Coolpix 880 and Swarovski scope.

Cormorant wing drying Water’s Edge Barton.© Graham Catley 2001- Digi-scoping combination Nikon Coolpix 880 and Swarovski scope.

Bullfinch male. © Graham Catley 2001- Digi-scoping combination Nikon Coolpix 880 and Swarovski scope.

Redshank Water’s Edge Barton. © Graham Catley 2001- Digi-scoping combination Nikon Coolpix 880 and Swarovski scope.

Dunlin roosting flock Killingholme. © Graham Catley 2001- Digi-scoping combination Nikon Coolpix 880 and Swarovski scope.

Goosander Water’s Edge Barton. © Graham Catley 2001- Digi-scoping combination Nikon Coolpix 880 and Swarovski scope.

Yellowhammer N Killingholme pits. © Graham Catley 2001- Digi-scoping combination Nikon Coolpix 880 and Swarovski scope.

Other digi-scoped shots on the web site

Bearded Tit, Short-eared and Long-eared Owls, Stonechats, Slavonian Grebe, Kingfisher, Snow Bunting, Black Redstart, House Sparrow, Sparrowhawk, Scaup, Peregrine, Whooper Swan, Pink-footed Geese.

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