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Help needed with how to find small birds using a long lens (1 Viewer)

ndwgolf

Active member
Guys
I am new to bird photography (and love it) a problem that I am finding is that when I see say a small kingfisher fly into a tree/bush, I can look at it and see it very clearly but as soon as I put my camera to my eye I struggle to find the small bird when using my 600mm f4 lens with a 1.7 TC.
A fellow birder mentioned some kind of device that you can attach to the hot shoe of the camera that can help............but he doesn't have a name.
Can anyone recommend what I can do or get to help me find these small birds??
 
The first thing to do is focus around the distance the bird is at then take a mental note of the twigs around a 3ft square this helps as you look with your eyes then the lens .

It gives an idea of where the bird is in relation to the surrounding twigs .

Rob.
 
Same way we learn to handle binoculars and scopes.
Practice!

Seriously!

Agreed.
Even harder with a 'scope I would imagine.

The best way is to look for a near reference point like a branch and follow that as a path to the subject.

The first thing to do is focus around the distance the bird is at then take a mental note of the twigs around a 3ft square this helps as you look with your eyes then the lens .

It gives an idea of where the bird is in relation to the surrounding twigs .

Rob.

All good advice :t:

1. Practice lining up your lens with your eye focal point. It will help. You will get better, and practice helps you get towards perfect.
2. Pre-focus on the distance.
3. Construct a mental roadmap of prominent features surrounding the bird - branches, thickness's, which way they run, changes in colour (ie a background vegetation patch, etc), up/down, left/right, bright/dark, etc, etc, and that way you will be able to tell by looking through the lens whether the features you are seeing are leading you toward the bird, or away from it .....
4. Pop your head up occassionally and engage the Mark-I eyeball, or binoculars to double check, listen too! --- sometimes you get lost in the roadmap, run out of memory!, or sometimes the little buggers just move to a different spot! :)


Chosun :gh:
 
Guys
A fellow birder mentioned some kind of device that you can attach to the hot shoe of the camera that can help............but he doesn't have a name.
Can anyone recommend what I can do or get to help me find these small birds??

The device is a Red Dot Sight.

I've picked a sight of the type that I use at random off Aliexpress:

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Holo..._91_22_80,searchweb201644_5,searchweb201560_9

The price is $22.59 with free shipping to UK. I have bought two of a similar type at a similar price. Quality has proved excellent. I may have been lucky. But it means that you don't have to spend big money to get a good and reliable sight.

I am Red-Green colour blind. I find a green dot brighter than a red dot. This is important in all bar bad lighting.

Mounts are hard to find, and critical to get right. The best mount out of the two I own is the previous model of the Extend-a-sight:

http://www.photosolve.com/main/product/xtendasight/index.html

http://www.photosolve.com/shop/shopdisplayproducts.asp?Search=Yes&sppp=5

http://www.photosolve.com/main/ordering/index.html

The price is $26.95. I can't help on shipping cost beyond what it says in the last URL above. My memory of what I paid a year or two ago was that the cost was reasonable (ie half the price of the mount at the most). The cost will of course show up on screen before you pay.

You will find recommendations of the current model of Xtend-a-Sight on DPP Forums.

Research mount before sight! If you can't find a suitable mount for your camera, it is pointless to buy a Red dot sight.

As for photographing small birds, I use a Canon SX50 (1200mm--35mm equivalent--maximum optical zoom bridge camera). For most of the time I use it at full zoom.

For small birds the range will be 10ft (Feather detail) to 20yd (Good quality i/d). Ie 3 to 20 metres. For i/d shots generally I might go out to 30/40yd (30-40m).

I call the Red dot sight an 'added resource'. I use it frequently to lay the camera on the bird, even at 10ft range. Little birds often pause only for a moment, and time to shot for a bridge camera is slow!

By way of example the other day I managed an in focus, full zoom shot using red dot sight of a foraging Wren at 10ft. It's not something that I bring off every day! But it shows what can be done.


Stephen
 

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ndwgolf

I don't like to tell a lie.

I have just been out into the garden with a five foot ruler and a torch. The distance of the Wren from the camera was 18ft (6 metres), not 10ft.

10 ft is more the distance from my bedroom window to where I photograph small birds such as Blue tits on the near branches of a nearby bush.


Stephen
 
A quick fix that I use is to align the tightening knob on the lens hood with the hot shoe on the camera, I hope that makes sense! This gives a crude sight that is quite accurate for windage (side to side) but your lens will be pointing below the subject. You will quickly learn by how much and "aim off" without thinking about it with a bit of practice.
Far from a perfect solution (free though!) but I find it pretty quick and it reliably gets me on target just in time to see them fly off! It's worth a try.
 
Not much help if you haven't got one, but the P900 has a little button on the side which allows you to zoom back out to refind a "lost" bird, take your finger off and as it zooms back you can pick out the target. I use it a lot.
Den
 
I find that like when using binoculars you concentrate your eyes on the subject and then without moving bring the viewfinder to the eye and not the other way round.....Eddy.
 
I have the latest 600 f4 so I only have one lens hood.
Today I used the lens hood knob and hot shoe as the target and nailed it every time......... Just like you said aim then just pan up to find your target, worked like a dream.........thanks

I find it works pretty well, nothing is perfect, but with practice it gets me on target pretty quickly.
Glad it works for you too!
 
Here's another - somewhat belated suggestion that I've found very useful.

If you take a look at this thread

http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=99084&highlight=aiming+device

you'll see that it describes something called a "cable tie sight" that a lot of people use on their scopes where the problem of finding targets is much greater because of the smaller field of view through the scope. The thread there is pretty detailed, so I won't repeat it here.

The principle is similar to the the method that johnf3f suggested earlier in this thread - you use something on the front end of the lens as a sight, place that over your target, and then move your eye to the viewfinder to compose your shot. The cable sight is a more developed version of that. Precision engineering it ain't, but as a means of getting a bird in the viewfinder, it's remarkably effective.

It would be difficult to get it to work on a lens where the external parts of the lens move with focusing or zooming, but with a lens like the Canon 400mm it works a treat.

I attach a couple of photos showing the thing on my camera. Since it's mounted on the lens hood which rotates, I use the seam of the lens sleeve to make sure that it's aligned correctly.

It's certainly worth a try - it only costs a few pence to make.

I hope that helps.


Cheers



Jeff
 

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