The Joys Of Photographing Kinglets
October 5th, 2008
The birding has been spectacular lately. I've been out at Mud Lake this weekend enjoying the influx of kinglets, sparrows and thrushes. But I'm not posting to tell you about birding, per se. The topic is photography. Yesterday was the day when I finally went out and purchased my spiffy new $600+ zoom lens. And today was the day when I returned my spiffy $600+ zoom lens.
I took it out to Mud Lake yesterday afternoon and shot everything I could over a space of four hours. And in the process I learned a few things.
The good news about photographing kinglets is that they're very bold--you can get within six feet of them and they evince no greater alarm than your average chickadee. The bad news about photographing kinglets is that they are the most hyperactive birds in the universe. Now refer back to what I said about autofocus being useless, and picture me carefully adjusting the focus wheel to zero in on a bird that moves every .000002 femtoseconds, and you'll have a good idea of how I spent my afternoon.
I worked, and worked, and worked. And finally was rewarded with this:
...and I'm convinced that the photographers who have taken sharp, in-focus pictures of Golden-Crowned Kinglets have captured and drugged them.
Anyway, the short story is that I need more skill, and I need more patience, but I also need more zoom to take the kinds of pictures I want. So I took the lens back, and I'm going to research the possibility of more focal length, and frankly, I'm going to seriously consider whether I want to take up the hobby of bird photography. Maybe I should try something less challenging. Like ice climbing.
October 5th, 2008
The birding has been spectacular lately. I've been out at Mud Lake this weekend enjoying the influx of kinglets, sparrows and thrushes. But I'm not posting to tell you about birding, per se. The topic is photography. Yesterday was the day when I finally went out and purchased my spiffy new $600+ zoom lens. And today was the day when I returned my spiffy $600+ zoom lens.
I took it out to Mud Lake yesterday afternoon and shot everything I could over a space of four hours. And in the process I learned a few things.
- 300mm is not enough zoom.
- When shooting small birds in thick foliage, autofocus is worse than
useless.
- VR (vibration reduction) works surprisingly well.
- The sun will be where you do not want it to be. Always.
- I now understand why I get borderline-hostile stares from some nature
photographers. It's because nature photographers secretly wish everyone else
in the world would CEASE TO EXIST (and thus cease to scare away the damn
wildlife) until they're finished taking the shot.
- Photographing Golden-Crowned Kinglets is an exercise in self-torture.
The good news about photographing kinglets is that they're very bold--you can get within six feet of them and they evince no greater alarm than your average chickadee. The bad news about photographing kinglets is that they are the most hyperactive birds in the universe. Now refer back to what I said about autofocus being useless, and picture me carefully adjusting the focus wheel to zero in on a bird that moves every .000002 femtoseconds, and you'll have a good idea of how I spent my afternoon.
I worked, and worked, and worked. And finally was rewarded with this:
...and I'm convinced that the photographers who have taken sharp, in-focus pictures of Golden-Crowned Kinglets have captured and drugged them.
Anyway, the short story is that I need more skill, and I need more patience, but I also need more zoom to take the kinds of pictures I want. So I took the lens back, and I'm going to research the possibility of more focal length, and frankly, I'm going to seriously consider whether I want to take up the hobby of bird photography. Maybe I should try something less challenging. Like ice climbing.
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