I've just followed Don's (Condor 305) lead in buying a SX50 earlier this week and took it for a spin today with as much of the wisdom a single reading of this thread can generate dialled into to my settings and expectations. Huge thanks to all who have contributed to an invaluable primer-cum-masterclass!
Up to now I have been hand-held digiscoping with the Coolpix 4500 and 6000, and the bore of carrying a full-size scope and tripod to mostly woodland birding meant that mostly I left it at home. Had I had a camera even half-decent pix would have helped me to nail two really awkward warblers in the last year - one a probable Blyth's Reed Warbler and the other a large locustella that can can only have been Gray's (a potential HK first!) or Styan's, (which has never been seen away from Deep Bay in Hong Kong). In both cases the camera/scope was nowhere near - leaving me to struggle with a written description that has little to no chance of being accepted.
While my basic aspiration is to secure shots for uploading with my posts on the Lantau and the Magic Roundabout BF threads I do get great satisfaction from pix that surpass the "record shot" standard (NB I've never used a DSLR so have a properly humble sense of what record shot means!).
Enough of the preamble . . . this morning I was out for the first time looking for common birds to set the SX50 on around Discovery Bay. I started over-ambitiously with a Blue Whistling Thrush in deep tangled cover in a stream bed. This gave me a chance to try out fixing the central focus on the bird to get past the clutter. This definitely worked for me! Even though the shots were awful it certainly showed what's possible in conditions in which a great deal of my birding takes place.
Some Crested Mynas and Magpie Robins hoping tamely about in the open provided less of a challenge and unsurprisingly the best shots at 5-8 metres in flattish (ok, pollution-hazed) sunshine.
I then walked down to the tiny mangrove/mudflat and was delighted to pick up a Black-winged Stilt which was a first for me on Lantau Island. It stayed around long enough to let me try out the shortcut telephoto function - which worked a treat, although the shots were way too soft and wobbly to be anything more than a record - Hopefully improvement will come wth practice.
The same was true of a Slaty-breasted Rail, which eventually allowed me to nail the fuzziest of record shots as it mooched about in the gloom under the mangroves some 40 metres away. No prizes for technical excellence, but an acceptable record shot of a bird I've seen less than ten times in the last 20 years here .
While photographing the stilt I looked down to see a skink staring back up at me from a granite outcrop right at my feet. It seemed perfectly happy to be stared at so I had a few attempts and even remembered to adjust the exposure setting and substantially improved the colour.
Having a camera with the versatility to zoom in on the stilt 50 metres away and then allow me almost ten minutes with a skink less than 2 metres away without disturbing it is superb. The coolpixes required the scope for the reach and a much closer approach for the small stuff, which meant I often came up empty-handed.
I'd welcome any feedback - especially on improving the Crested Myna and skink shots.
Cheers
Mike