Creative Camerawork

Cafe Society
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On Saturday I decided to go birding at the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge (aka Brigantine or the “Brig”). I grabbed my Pentax PCF 10x50 binoculars and my Mavica digital camera (FD-81) with a single floppy. Birding was great - I saw some good shorebirds (Black-bellied and Semipalmated Plovers, Dunlins, American Black Skimmers, Ruddy Turnstones) in breeding plumage. A lovely time was had by all.

As I was rounding the far side of the wildlife drive, I spied a Red Fox lying on the mudflats. I might not have seen this guy, except that another car had stopped for a reason. I searched and then found the fox with my binoculars. And then I remembered my camera.

Now, anyone that has taken wildlife photos with their standard camera knows that you usually end up with nothing but landscape. I don’t know how many times I’ve taken bird-in-flight shots and ended with a picture of Aves quadripixellatus. But I am persistant. And after taking a few useless shots, I remember my binoculars. Oooookay, let’s give it a try. I press the camera lens to one binocular eyepiece, manage to see what looks like the fox in the viewfinder and press the button. I can’t tell if there is a useable shot, but I try again, this time on a female Osprey on her nest and a Black-crowned Night Heron.

Well, it worked, more or less, to my surprise. They’re not the best pics in the world, but useable: brachy’s handmade telephoto session (with thumbnails). To show the quality of the camera, the first two pictures are those I typically make with the Mavica (handheld birds and a macro lens). The third shot is the usual landscape shot with invisible fox (circled). The last two are the binocamera shots.

I wonder if I can increase the red, which seems to have disappeared. The fox had a beautiful red coat, but it’s hardly apparent. My knowledge about camerawork is nil - the camera I had before was a Kodak 126. Does anyone have an idea?

Also, I’d love to see pictures that you have that you are particularly happy with, surprised they came out or that were taken under unusual situations. Bring out those bungie-jumping self portraits! Come on, I showed you mine. Now you show me yours.

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That’s pretty cool!

You can get better color quality with a proper telephoto lens. Binocular lenses are not as good about color preservation.

Also, using a film camera with a color rich slide-type film can help with nature shots.

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The favourite picture I’ve ever taken I’ve unfortunatly lost or else I’d scan it in and show off.

Twas a complete mistake, the developers accidentally put two bits of negative onto one bit of paper. The two pictures were both of the same guy though, one was a long shot and one was a close up of his face.

It was completly accidental but I wound up with a very good effect, the photo looked like those paperback covers that have a montage of the characters faces over pics of them doing something.

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Well, I’d somehow doubt that you’d be able to get faithful color repoduction by shooting through binoculars. They’re not built for that purpose, so they aren’t going to be calibrated for that. However, you may be able to warm up the picture a bit by adjusting your white balance (if you have that option on your digital camera. Set it on cloudy day. It’ll help, but I doubt it will have that much effect.) That said, for what it is, it’s surprisingly good. It won’t get you in the pages of National Geographic anytime soon, but for personal purposes it’s interesting. The bottom photo even has a subtle impressionistic character to it.

As for pix I’m happy with, you can just click on the “www” button beneath this post.

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Very nice pic, pulykamell. I like the silhouette aspect of the people in the foreground. I bounce back and forth between the detail of the background and them. I also really like your Gellert (?) bath picture (with the orange skylight). Very inviting.

Someday I will get a real telephoto setup. In the meantime, it simply struck me as odd that the red should disappear. With the binoculars alone, the coat was striking. And the camera has no problem with reds by itself. But the combination is like Visine: it got the red out. Some sort of wave cancellation?

I know of at least one model of Mavica that does have a white balance adjustment. I’ll have to see if that’s possible with my model. Or try the outdoors/sun/snow settings (I’ve never seen too much of a difference with these). If not, maybe I’ll try fiddling with things postproduction. At least with the originals, I can say “See, I really DID see that bird” (if I can keep my hand from jiggling too much).