16.06.2020 Desperately needed practice on the lake.

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Tuesday 16th. Max 75F. A long, warm and sunny day. Off to the lake to practice digiscoping the water birds. I need lots more practice to find the bird on the water through the telescope. The water is often without obvious clues as to a bird's position. Causing quite a lot of hunting to bring them into view.

Finding birds through any instrument is a slowly developed skill. I have years of practice with binoculars but none with a spotting scope.The advice from the wildlife photography experts on YT suggests practicing [endlessly] on the mundane. Saving the rare sighting for your debut digiscoping masterpiece is very unlikely to be as easy as you hoped.

The sparrow or the mallard duck doesn't care that it is not rare. They all make a valid target for endless practice in framing and focusing and capturing "the moment." The problem with the lake is that it is 70 yards to the middle and twice that to the opposite shore. Perhaps that is really an advantage in accelerating my climb up the steep learning curve.

I am using stronger reading glasses just to see the little Ixus screen. Which makes it impossible to see the distance clearly. For which I need no glasses. Focusing accurately remains an almost random affair. I simply cannot see the degree of focusing sharpness well enough on the tiny, heavily pixelated, Ixus screen. 

My eleven year old Lumix TZ7 is totally unsuitable for digiscoping because of its 12x zoom and long snout. So a new camera is on order to try and lift my skills. I really am unable to make much further progress using the Ixus 117HS as a focusing and framing screen.

Other than learning to point accurately and practiing panning and tracking smoothly. Which is a fine art with such a very long, equivalent focal length. Talking of which: I tried to keep the telescope power and camera zoom down to a minimum this time. Make lots of mistakes but learn from them by constant repetition. Develop the eye and the necessary muscles required for digiscoping.

A lot of anticipation is required to keep the bird centered within the frame. Water birds are rarely still and often carried along by the lightest wind. They suddenly decide to put a spurt on and then just as quickly turn round on the spot. Capturing a "flattering" shot of them is actually very difficult. The ability to do it repeatedly needs careful honing.

Fortunately, most of the costs in digiscoping [locally] are in the purchase of the vital equipment. No expensive film and developing is involved. Nobody counts the digital images piling up on the floor. Every single one of which is a small sacrifice to building experience and skill.

The nearest birds to my nearest shore were the Great Crested Grebes. Sometimes swimming within 30 yards but mostly out in the middle of the lake. One adult and two juveniles. The adult spent most of the time hunting underwater.  Appearing just briefly enough to tempt a quick 'snap' before it vanished again. While the two juveniles paddled up and down the lake, preened or dozed. Their crests are already showing dark tufts on the backs of their heads. Their plumage is also darkening with increasing maturity.

Shelducks, with young, were too distant, at 130 yards to be worth spending too much time on them. Being so pale they reflect in the slightly choppy water. The Ixus has no filter thread. So I cannot use a polarizing filter to reduce the bright reflections.

Mallards were their usual busy selves. With a solitary Coot feeding at the little duck nesting house provided by the lake owner at 180 yards. I took quite a lot of stills and a few videos largely concentrating on the grebes.

A ridiculous number of my stills were out of focus! Conversely, the videos were mostly fine regarding focus but need careful editing to reduce "user errors." Having almost no experience with video editing I must improve my video capture skills instead. Smooooth!

I really need a more sensible arrangement for all the gear I have to carry. Some of which needs to be fitted or removed from the telescope. I am using well laundered socks but they are hardly ideal. The straight Kowa takes up much more room in the Viking Optics tripod carry-system bag than the bent Razor. Neither would allow the eyepiece to be fitted. Fortunately I can use my cycle, saddle bag but the kit really needs better protection and easier identification. Everything used to come in drawstring, vinyl bags in my youth but these aren't so visible these days.

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