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Thursday 2nd July. Armed with the telescope, the G9 camera and the PA7 adapter I cycled to the lake.Only a solitary Grebe was present within my field of view. So I snapped away for an hour as the bird drifted around near the far shore. I doubt it ever came any closer than 100 yards. Though mostly it floated at 110-120 yards measured on Google Earth. Practice in anticipating the bird's movements is all good.
I soon became used to manual focusing on the telescope. Using the [very] subtle blue wash in the viewfinder as a guide to my focusing accuracy. It eventually dawned on me that the camera was not on optimum settings. I had left it at +2/3 EV and sunny conditions from last time. Whereas it was moderately bright overcast, today and needed no EV boost.
The excessive brightness immediately dropped to a more sensible level. The water took on a much more appealing, deep green. Aperture priority dropped the exposure down to 1/125. So I set the G9 to shutter priority instead and it jumped to 1/500. I have just realised it is decades since I used a manual camera. My old OM1n film SLR. The Pixel Opillas wireless, shutter remote is superb! I was often holding the shutter on half press as I waited for the best "moment" in the bird's behaviour. The actual brightness and sharpness of the scene was nicely displayed at half press and surprisingly dark. Which, they say, is better than too bright. You can alway brighten an image but you can't kill overblown highlights.
As I feared, the Sirui PH-20 gimbal is far too free in panning and needs much more friction. Though not the roughness of the "cogging" when it locks up without warning! I keep wondering whether mine is broken. Shouldn't there be a gradual increase in braking as a normal user would expect? I might fit a stick on the Sirui gimbal to take back the missing control. Or fit a friction damper of my own.[?]
At least the digiscoping set-up was balanced this time. I have been struggling with the silly little camera plate on the Manfrotto 500 head for too long! The altitude [tilt] friction of the PH-20 was nicely nuanced in adjustment. You'd think Sirui would have learned from that success? None of my images were razor sharp but the vast majority were acceptable given the considerable distances involved. This is a remarkable improvement on my earlier efforts. When most of my more distant stills were poor to very poor. The Grebe images are rather soft and almost like paintings. Quite unlike the unbelievably sharp imagery you see from the digiscoping experts.
There was considerable cropping to increase the scale of the bird. Also to remove distracting blobs of foam. I had deliberately chosen 18Mb image capture to leave me room to make adjustments. I am still serially watching YouTube videos on photography. Though not all of it directly relates to digiscoping there is still much to learn about the complexities of DSLRs.
Video is easier to capture but requires far more friction in panning than the PH-20 is providing at present. My short videos were actually unpleasant to view. So I may have been using too fast a frame rate. I made no conscious choice amongst the many options and just went with something which sounded familiar.
I have decided to try and "break in" the Sirui gimbal horizontal [panning] axis by repeated rotation as I tightened and loosened the locking knob. The totally ridiculous eccentricity seems to be reducing. Meanwhile the locking is much less abrupt and noticeably smoother. Even a hint of graduated friction braking towards the tightest spot now.
The very much cheaper, Neewar gimbal has quite a following on YT. With several videos on repair and mods. The major problem with that seems to be sticky lubricant. Whereas the Sirui is much too free moving. Without being able to heat the CF of the housing I can't dismantle it. Without taking it apart I can't see where the faults lie. Very few own gimbal heads and even fewer this particular example. Whom do I consult for advice on obvious faults?
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