Wednesday, April 14, 2010

couple of more attempts at video.





'll be surprised if anyone gets this one!

Surely its only a matter of time before someone eg Nikon produces a camera that screws straight onto the body of a scope and does this stuff properly.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

New Camera - new disasters

I've bought a new camera. A Canon S90 powershot. So I'm back to where this blog started, stuffing a compact digital camera down the lens of the scope. So far its been excellent, with one exception...

I went down to SLRS to try and connect with a male Garganey that's been around. Any fears I had about connecting with it disappeared when three ducks standing on the river bank (Herts side!) in a wildfowl-collection-escape stylee turned out to be two Gadwall and the male Garganey. They flew off just as I was fiddling with my camera, but appeared later on the scrape allowing me to take a video with the new camera.



If you've looked at it, you'll have noticed something odd. It appears to be monochrome with the exception of green. That's because it is. The camera just would not get out of this weird and bizarre single-colour mode for videos.

Have you ever been about to take a photo or record a segment of video and found yourself thinking "this would be massively improved by taking it in monochrome except for just one colour"? Me neither. but some bright spark in Canon has not only put this on this camera, but made it the default option that is impossible to get rid of. Looks like I'm going to have to break the habit of a lifetime and read the manual.

Apart form the Garganey and Gadwalls, there were a few Teal, a Little Grebe, a couple of pairs of Bullfinches and a number of Blackcaps. There was what I'm 90% sure was a Garden Warbler, but it kept hidden in the middle of a bush, The clock was tcking, so it will have to wait.

Great Grey Shrike

Nine years ago when I gave up working I went to see a Great Grey Shrike at Grimes Graves. It was easy to find, showed well, all round very ...