[columbidae]

...but sometime soon would love to be able to take digital pics of some of the birds that I see. I'm also on a very tight budget. My questions are:

1. What is the least amount of money I can spend to be able to take very basic but decent photos of wild birds? Nothing fancy, and certainly not able to afford digiscoping at this time, just simple digital pics to remember my sightings with.

2. Any specific product/brand recommendations?

3. Looking at digital cameras, what is the difference between digital and visual (I think that's what they were called) zoom?

Thanks,

[normjackson]

A visual (or perhaps optical) zoom is a real zoom on the camera lens that will reach out and give more real magnification of your subject like binoculars or a telescope. In your picture your subject will look larger and will have all the detail you'd expect it to have as if you were physically closer.

The digital zoom facility in a camera is a bit like enlarging and cropping a picture you already have; so magnification with a digital zoom effectively duplicates the dots that make it up horizontally and vertically. Sure your subject is bigger, but because the dots added are duplicates no extra detail is given. Indeed by enlarging by duplicating dots, or pixels, you might start to become more aware of lack of detail in your picture and it may start to look blurred or "blocky".

To get decent results in photographing wild birds requires either their cooperation in getting close to you, your determination to get close to them (which may require some form of hide to avoid scaring away timid birds), a lens with high magnification, or a combination of these.

On a budget the immediate options that strike me are :

1) v. cheap camera, scope and tripod (perhaps secondhand)
2) digital camcorder with large zoom
3) digital camera with long lens

Lots of questions spring to mind: would the photos just be intended as "records" rather than attractive photographs in their own right (maybe you've answered that one); are you interested in going down the digiscoping route with all the dedication and expense that could ultimately entail or is that a definite no no; do you already have the relevant computer hardware and software (perhaps quite demanding for option 2) which I know literally nothing about...)?

I'd imagine the more of these sorts of questions you can answer the better advice you'll get here from the experts on hand.

BTW, I'm a beginner and went with option 3) assuming that this really limited me to birds that would barely qualify as wild. Having said that, I've now seen results from forum members taken at 10-15x magnification which definitely ARE of wild birds. There's a thread about the camera I have at :

http://www.birdforum.net/forums/show...&threadid=5676

One of the posts contains links to the major digital camera review sites where you can get loadsa info on still digital cameras.

[Ragna]

Dan check out Marysan's pictures in her gallery[click page 12 at the bottom of the gallery photo's] She uses a nikon coolpix 4300 camera plus a 2x converter and gets amazing shots, to fit a converter to a digital camera it needs to have a filter thread on the lens, i think some of the other Nikon cameras also have this filter thread,if you read some of other post other photographers are using converters up to 8x with good success. but you raelly do want a camera that will take a converter.

[Andy Bright]

Originally posted by columbidae
...but sometime soon would love to be able to take digital pics of some of the birds that I see. I'm also on a very tight budget. My questions are:

1. What is the least amount of money I can spend to be able to take very basic but decent photos of wild birds? Nothing fancy, and certainly not able to afford digiscoping at this time, just simple digital pics to remember my sightings with.

2. Any specific product/brand recommendations?

3. Looking at digital cameras, what is the difference between digital and visual (I think that's what they were called) zoom?

Thanks,

Lots of good advice already given.
If you are really struggling to afford a new camera, secondhand could be an option.... though, personally, I'm a little wary of used electronics.
Olympus seem to be very popular with their 700 series cameras, with their big 10x lenses (optical zoom). Though it is better to have a camera with built-in image stabilisation when using high magnification, so as to help avoid blurry shots due to camera shake.
Norm like his new Panasonic Lumix, which has a big lens and I.S. I'm not sure if Canon still make the 90 I.S. but this is a similar camera.
As for digital zoom, it's no more than a marketing ploy to catch the unwary..... It reduces quality and it doesn't do anything that you can't do on your computer (in fact enlarging on your computer is better, digital zoom at time of taking photo will cause more camera shake effects).
Basically, optical zoom = good, digital zoom = bad.

[Karl J]

In the same position as Dan myself, ( just haven;t got round to doing anything about it yet ) so that last bit about the zooms makes very interesting reading. Thanks Andy

[bcurrie]

Just to add on to Andy's comment, the Canon Pro90IS is out of production, but it IS still for sale at a number of places (at least in the US). Of course the price has gone up from when I bought mine due to it being out of production.