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Nikon and The Brevard Nature Alliance present Space Coast Birding & Wildlife Festival November 16 - 20, 2005 in Brevard County, Florida A celebration of birds and wildlife. |
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Nikon and The Brevard Nature Alliance present Space Coast Birding & Wildlife Festival November 16 - 20, 2005 in Brevard County, Florida A celebration of birds and wildlife. |
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I have been hooked on photography since my travels overland in the 1970's with an Olympus Trip 35 camera shooting Kodak 25 and 64 slide film. Along the way I have stopped using film and I will never go back.
I first became aware of digiscoping on a visit to Tula Lake at Klamath Falls in 2000. It was there that I saw two men who were photographing Bald Eagles with some strange scope/video setups. I went over for a chat and they showed me their equipment. When I took a look at what they were seeing on the video screen I was amazed. Eagles that were one hundred yards away filled the frame! I was instantaneously hooked on the potential of this technology. Since I already had a Nikon Coolpix 990 camera, I decided I had to get a scope as soon as possible.
As soon as we arrived in Scottsdale, AZ, I went into a sporting goods store and bought a Bushnell scope with an 18-36x zoom for about $100. I spent many happy hours over the next few days sitting on a friend's porch at the Scottsdale Country Club photographing water birds on the pond. In order to make this work without an adapter, I set the scope up on a tabletop tripod and the camera on a pile of books. I would look through the scope to find a bird that wasn't moving. Then I'd slide the pile of books across to the eyepiece and line the camera up to take photos. I was able to do this while having a beer around sunset without moving from my seat. What a wonderful way to do bird photography! There was no disturbance to the birds and very little to me except I had to be careful that I didn't knock the beer over as I moved the books around. As you would expect with a $100 scope the quality was not that great, but I was getting photographs that would have been difficult to obtain any other way.
I realized that I needed a lot more information if I was going to do this properly, so I went on the Internet to see what was out there. At that time there were a few people around the world fiddling with similar ideas and a Yahoo Group had been set up for the discussion of the technologies by a man well known as the "Father of Digiscoping," Lawrence Poh from Malaysia (groups.yahoo.com/group/digiscopingbirds/).
In 1999, I retired and moved back to Australia from Hong Kong, where I had been living for 16 years, concentrating on scenery and cultural photography. I now had a lot more free time to test my new hobby and began building camera mounts for my scope so I could have two cameras set up on one head. I already had a pair of Swarovski 8x20 binoculars and the lens of my Nikon CP990 camera made a snug fit inside the rubber eyecup. All I had to do was find a way to mount them firmly together. This was accomplished by using standard brackets and bolts from the local hardware store and some large rubber bands to hold the bins firmly. A very ungainly setup, my contraption was not easy to use in the field -- the experiment never left my garage.
I started using a Nikon E3 camera with a Nikon 500mm mirror lens to photograph birds that I was seeing around the local parks in Sydney where I was taking flower and insect photos. It wasn't long before I realized that in order to get close enough to birds to get good photos without disturbing them I needed to use the digiscoping techniques.
Knowing that I needed to get a better scope since the Bushnell was not designed to photograph through, I chose a Kowa 821M (non-fluorite) with a 32x fixed eyepiece. I got good results with this combination, using adapters from Scopetronix to connect the CP990 camera to the scope. Sharing of experiences over the Internet with digiscoping pioneers on Digiscopingbirds and Birdspix was a constant source of encouragement and learning for me. I can't tell you how pleased I was when Lawrence Poh made a nice comment about one of my photos!
About this time, I experienced an event that changed the direction of my bird photography. While photographing in one of the National Parks in Sydney, I was harried by rangers who saw my tripod and asked to see my license. When I received a letter from the National Parks Association I knew it was time to move on. Since I wasn't doing this professionally, I didn't want to pay the $2000 annual fee to photograph in Australia's National Parks.
I started wandering around my local area on the northern beaches of Sydney and discovered a little jewel of a wetland, which had been set up with a boardwalk to provide access to the flora and fauna of the area. It contained the last stand of Swamp Mahogany in the Sydney basin. I chose to spend my days there and began to meet like minded individuals who were interested in birds and photography. It was there that I met "my old photographer mate,Ó Alan Foster, who had been interested in birds and photographing them for over sixty years. His photos have appeared in most of the bird books published in Australia.
Alan became my mentor, not only for photography but also on bird behavior. As a sideline he had a well equipped workshop and was generous enough to make adapters for me as well as modifying eyepieces to improve their characteristics (this involved shaving them down to allow the camera lens to get closer to the glass of the eyepiece). I still use an old Miller wooden tripod that Alan modified. I met a local birdwatcher who had been documenting the birds of the area for over twenty years and who ran a local e-mail group. I started posting photos to them, which led to a lot of new friendships.
I also met an environmentalist/consultant to the local Council who had been instrumental in setting up the boardwalk and obtaining land for the reserve. We discussed ideas for documenting the birds of the Warriewood Wetland for posterity. Since I had already photographed about 30 species out of approximately 130 recorded in the area, we decided to make it a project. For the next three years, I visited the wetlands for up to six hours a day on most days of the week in order to get material for the book. It was finally published in 2004 with the help of several other photographers who had photos that I was not able to obtain.
During this time I found my dream scope, the Swarovsk AT80HD with a 30x eyepiece (shaved down of course), and upgraded my camera to the Nikon Coolpix 4500 for the extra 1 megapixel (over the CP990 ) and 4 x zoom for extra reach. This made a big improvement for photographing in marginal light or against-the-light. Using this equipment, I took a photo that won the Gold Medal for Nature Prints at the 44th Sydney International Exhibition of Photography in 2004. As far as I know, this was the first digiscoped photo to win such an international award.
I have now upgraded my Nikon E3 camera to a Nikon D100, which I mainly use with the Nikon 300mm ED f4 lens and more recently the Nikon 80-400mm VR lens. This combination hangs around my neck all day so that I'm ready for any flight shots, fast action shots or very close birds in shrubbery shots. Many of my photos have been used by environmental groups for their newsletters and posters, including the New South Wales Parks Association. I was very pleased when three of my photos were accepted for inclusion in Dennis Paulson's Shorebirds of North America - A photographic Guide.
Over the last 3 or 4 years, numerous people have adopted digital SLRs and zoom lenses to do serious bird photography. Many Digiscopers have also made the switch. I continue to photograph using both systems. I still get excited when I can snap a photo from 50 yards out that is only a tiny speck in a 500mm lens. My record for a distant recognizable bird was set in Sydney when I photographed a Sea Eagle that was 650 yards away on a hillside above our local lake. I'm going for 1000 yards on my trip to Florida.
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