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Post by davidwilson on Mar 4, 2018 20:52:20 GMT
Thank you - I think my youngest son has a bridge camera. Not an expensive one and quite old but he is going to find it for me to try - it will give me an idea of what is possible! I have been looking back at Amazon orders and I am quite surprised to see how much I have spent on compact cameras with optical zoom over the years! If you do go for a compact instead of a bridge I think you would need a viewfinder for birds rather than the rear screen. As you have said don't ever use digital zoom . Yes, thank you, good points. |
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Post by davidwilson on Mar 4, 2018 20:58:37 GMT
I am a Canon fan having an EOS 10 film camera with 35-105 and 70-300mm lenses (now as defunct as all film cameras are), a PowerShot S2 IS which served as a replacement and first digital camera and now, most recently an EOS 80D with an 18-135mm lens. The attached blue tit was taken just now with the 80D at a range of about 10m again through a dirty window: 
I used the maximum focal length / magnification available (135mm) - click to see the full size image (and notice how I managed better focus on the feeder than the bird - I must learn how to use my new toy!) While this is a really great camera and the range of the zoom lens is perfect for everyday stuff it really doesn't cut it for wildlife photography (as aleady indicated by Aleman above). And, while I'd really quite like a comparable 300, 400 or 500mm lens I'm not going to spend the necessary £thousands right now. Looking at current bridge cameras online, one could get a NIKON COOLPIX P900 for around £500 with an 83x optical zoom and a 35mm equivalent zoom range of 24-2000 mm. As johnd says above, a good bridge camera seems a very attractive option and a lot lighter to lug around. Personally, I'm quite tempted by the idea of a weatherproof 'nature' camera that can live outside, trained on a particular area with a motion sensor so that the wildlife can photograph itself. I did just now try to photograph what I thought was a blackcap but it snuck around behind the feeder as a took the shot and flew off before I'd chance to take another ...  Wow, thank you. That’s a lot of information for me to look at. I will look those cameras in a bit and have a good read. It’s sounding like a bridge camera could be what I need and is more affordable! That’s a good photo from 10m :TU: |
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Post by davidwilson on Mar 4, 2018 21:07:44 GMT
Some of the bridge cameras are fantastic. They are lighter and have very long focal length lenses. I’ll have some bird photos somewhere. It is sounding like a bridge camera is what I need. I wouldn’t want anything too heavy! |
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Post by charliefarlie on Mar 4, 2018 21:13:36 GMT
Is there such a thing as a binoculars that take pictures  |
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Post by davidwilson on Mar 4, 2018 21:16:03 GMT
Is there such a thing as a binoculars that take pictures I have seen photos that people used binoculars with a camera! |
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Post by widge on Mar 4, 2018 21:22:11 GMT
Is there such a thing as a binoculars that take pictures I had a look at some of those a couple of years ago, and apart from some that were very expensive the camera did not actually use the binocular lenses and was built into the frame of the binoculars and pointed in the same direction, and from some of the reviews that I read the quality of the picture was disappointing compared to what you could see through the binoculars. But as I said this was a couple of years ago and things change very quickly, so maybe that isn't the case now. |
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Post by davrav on Mar 4, 2018 21:32:05 GMT
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Post by charliefarlie on Mar 4, 2018 21:53:24 GMT
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Post by davrav on Mar 4, 2018 22:01:12 GMT
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Post by anchorman on Mar 4, 2018 23:14:41 GMT
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Post by davrav on Mar 4, 2018 23:46:55 GMT
Is that a version with a viewfinder or just the screen Anchs?
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Post by shcm on Mar 5, 2018 6:44:54 GMT
"Digi-Scoping" is an alternative to the binoculars. Universal adapters were/are available for attaching a phone or camera to a spotting scope.
It does mean you're carrying a spotting scope & tripod around, but then many bird enthusiasts often are.
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Post by davidwilson on Mar 5, 2018 7:11:21 GMT
These were taken with a Canon bridge    Brilliant ! That's helped a lot. Thank you Don |
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Post by widge on Mar 5, 2018 7:18:00 GMT
Once we have spotted a bird, we use this to look it up, it is a little expensive but an excellent book, but it might cover too large an area for you if you are only interested in British birds. www.nhbs.com/collins-bird-guide-book |
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aleman
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Post by aleman on Mar 5, 2018 10:43:53 GMT
The biggest problem with bridge cameras is the size of the sensor, this introduces noise, (Which you can clearly see on Anchs pictures) and is the reason why DSLR's win hands down especially Full Frame. The next issue is that of light gathering, the max aperture of Bridge cameras is quite large, and often (unless designed properly) varies with focal length. This changes the depth of field, and the depth of focus as well but that's another story, which then makes it difficult to get the focus right. ... Anchs pictures are good, I suspect cropped from a larger image, but are not sharp, or indeed in focus. In the first the camera has focussed on the stick behind the bird, the second has the tail in focus, but not the head, and the third the seeds in the feeder are perfectly focussed, the bird isn't, as it's behind the plane of focus.
I'm a photography nerd, and have been a judge at local camera club competitions, so I probably have significantly different expectations as to what a good picture should contain. ... Then again there are probably not many of you who enlarge your images to 16 by 20" (even partial enlargements). What looks good and sharp on a computer/camera screen often turns out to be very soft when enlarged properly.
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