~~
My
age does not bode well for memorizing all the G9's menus in only a few
short hours. I might print out the menus to save wasted time button
pressing and failing to achieve my purpose first time. There is also the
struggle in my seeing the tiny viewing screen and symbols. Which
require my strongest reading glasses. Though, fortunately, I find the G9
viewfinder is much easier to use.
During today's digiscoping session I was often seeing much sharper images in the viewfinder than I actually captured. Particularly at the 60x power on the Kowa. Which was necessary to give useful size to birds near the distant shores. I must assume my images are suffering from camera shake from manually depressing the shutter. While remote shutter release is easily achieved it does not make the birds sit still for long. So some panning and tilting is inevitable.
Printing out the G9 menus at a suitably large size, for rapid reading legibility, will provide ready reference material. Without needing any glasses at all. Experts will confirm that practice is 90% of achieving any real skill. "Beginners luck" is only ever intended to encourage the wannabe expert. If it were too easy it would not be worth doing and everybody would become an expert overnight.
There is a [so called] 10,000 hour rule to achieve full expertise. However that equates to four years of full time activity. Listening to professional wildlife photographers on their YT videos convinced me that most of them are highly intelligent. That most of them have studied their chosen "prey" and delved deeply into all aspects of their craft. Most of them have "high end" equipment and know it inside out. However, is certainly not that alone which provides the stunning images they capture. Their choice of equipment does not hinder the application of their skills.
There is so much which goes unspoken because they have stopped thinking about it. One can still learn much from their commentaries. The direction of the sun, the wind direction. The time of day. Is the tide coming in or going out? Learning all the varieties and names of their quarry. There are so many factors which have to be absorbed just to achieve basic competence.
Then there are the years of practice at swinging large lenses manually to capture birds in flight. The long and antisocial hours just waiting for something to appear. Learning the habits of their subjects. Which many amateurs would avoid for themselves. Simply because it is too much trouble and they can always rely on luck. Or a tip-off about a rare sighting on the grapevine.
While the Manfrotto 055 tripod is quite stiff it is asking a lot for it to cope with the magnifications [equivalent focal length] of digiscoping. In 4/3 camera terms using the pancake 20mm then 25x = 1000mm. While 60x = 2400mm. These figures are taken from Kowa's own digiscoping website.
These extreme focal lengths are not usable without taking great care to avoid system movement during the exposure. Very fast shutter speeds are highly desirable. Except that the telescope/camera system will struggle to achieve these. The aperture/equivalent focal length will make for a relatively "slow" system. 1000/88 = f:11.4. 2400/88 = f:27! There is no free lunch. Raising the ISO helps and is vital to obtaining faster shutter speeds. Rigidity of the support system is vital. Cable or wireless release can help if the subject is stationary.
Remember that depth of field is also poor at extreme focal lengths. Though this depends on distance. Some birds stay still. Lots more don't. I have discovered to my cost [in poor results] that even a dozing and floating bird is rarely still. They drift on the slightest breeze. With the inevitably small field of view the bird rapidly moves completely out of sight unless you pan. Which means you can't lock down the tripod head in the vain hope of greater stiffness. I kept trying that and then needed to pan and tilt to follow a drifting bird.
One of the advantages of digiscoping is the [usually] considerable distance between yourself and your subject matter. So they are much less likely to be nervous and fly [or run] off as a result. My local Grebe has the habit of vanishing underwater in an instant. Usually without the slightest sign of preparation for an extended dive.
Waiting until the bird presents a pleasing pose is usually a lost cause. The diving obviously takes a toll on its plumage. So it spends time preening. The resulting contortions are rather unlikely to make attractive stills. Though video is far more forgiving and even quite entertaining.
As I packed up all my kit, to cycle home, I noticed the curious ducks and grebes had come to see what was happening. None of them had come near the shore while I was standing behind my tripod. Typical! 😊
During today's digiscoping session I was often seeing much sharper images in the viewfinder than I actually captured. Particularly at the 60x power on the Kowa. Which was necessary to give useful size to birds near the distant shores. I must assume my images are suffering from camera shake from manually depressing the shutter. While remote shutter release is easily achieved it does not make the birds sit still for long. So some panning and tilting is inevitable.
Printing out the G9 menus at a suitably large size, for rapid reading legibility, will provide ready reference material. Without needing any glasses at all. Experts will confirm that practice is 90% of achieving any real skill. "Beginners luck" is only ever intended to encourage the wannabe expert. If it were too easy it would not be worth doing and everybody would become an expert overnight.
There is a [so called] 10,000 hour rule to achieve full expertise. However that equates to four years of full time activity. Listening to professional wildlife photographers on their YT videos convinced me that most of them are highly intelligent. That most of them have studied their chosen "prey" and delved deeply into all aspects of their craft. Most of them have "high end" equipment and know it inside out. However, is certainly not that alone which provides the stunning images they capture. Their choice of equipment does not hinder the application of their skills.
There is so much which goes unspoken because they have stopped thinking about it. One can still learn much from their commentaries. The direction of the sun, the wind direction. The time of day. Is the tide coming in or going out? Learning all the varieties and names of their quarry. There are so many factors which have to be absorbed just to achieve basic competence.
Then there are the years of practice at swinging large lenses manually to capture birds in flight. The long and antisocial hours just waiting for something to appear. Learning the habits of their subjects. Which many amateurs would avoid for themselves. Simply because it is too much trouble and they can always rely on luck. Or a tip-off about a rare sighting on the grapevine.
While the Manfrotto 055 tripod is quite stiff it is asking a lot for it to cope with the magnifications [equivalent focal length] of digiscoping. In 4/3 camera terms using the pancake 20mm then 25x = 1000mm. While 60x = 2400mm. These figures are taken from Kowa's own digiscoping website.
These extreme focal lengths are not usable without taking great care to avoid system movement during the exposure. Very fast shutter speeds are highly desirable. Except that the telescope/camera system will struggle to achieve these. The aperture/equivalent focal length will make for a relatively "slow" system. 1000/88 = f:11.4. 2400/88 = f:27! There is no free lunch. Raising the ISO helps and is vital to obtaining faster shutter speeds. Rigidity of the support system is vital. Cable or wireless release can help if the subject is stationary.
Remember that depth of field is also poor at extreme focal lengths. Though this depends on distance. Some birds stay still. Lots more don't. I have discovered to my cost [in poor results] that even a dozing and floating bird is rarely still. They drift on the slightest breeze. With the inevitably small field of view the bird rapidly moves completely out of sight unless you pan. Which means you can't lock down the tripod head in the vain hope of greater stiffness. I kept trying that and then needed to pan and tilt to follow a drifting bird.
One of the advantages of digiscoping is the [usually] considerable distance between yourself and your subject matter. So they are much less likely to be nervous and fly [or run] off as a result. My local Grebe has the habit of vanishing underwater in an instant. Usually without the slightest sign of preparation for an extended dive.
Waiting until the bird presents a pleasing pose is usually a lost cause. The diving obviously takes a toll on its plumage. So it spends time preening. The resulting contortions are rather unlikely to make attractive stills. Though video is far more forgiving and even quite entertaining.
As I packed up all my kit, to cycle home, I noticed the curious ducks and grebes had come to see what was happening. None of them had come near the shore while I was standing behind my tripod. Typical! 😊
~~
