Hi Birding-Aussers,
Just wanted to see if anyone out there can offer any thoughts.
We are planning a visit to PNG in the future and felt that in order to properly record the activities of all those Birds of Paradise which we would hopefully see, then some kind of moving image would be more effective than stills.
Peter, my other half, is quite taken with the idea. He is an experienced bird photographer but has never dabbled with “movies” before. It seems that modern camcorders (e.g. Panasonic TM900) have really decent zooms and can produce good quality material in low light – both essential conditions of bird photography.
Have any of you tried it?? Was it successful?? Any tip and hints??
Rosemary
Rosemary Royle, Wales, UK
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Comments
5 responses to “Using video recorders for birds”
HI Rosemary, Sorry if you have been inundated with advice on this but i would like to echo others sentiments that the current crop of DSLRs are the way to go for sure. The quality of the output is way better than anything else. For the money you can’t beat a Canon 60D. It has some features for video that make it better than many of the other models. Advantages FOR VIDEO over the 7D for example are: a: cheaper b: it has a flip out screen – an underrated tool for videography. c: the ability to manually control audio input levels from an external microphone. If you started to get even semi serious for video then an external mic is going to be a must. I bought an Azden one from B&H for well under $100 that is way better than the inbuilt mic which picks up your hand movement, images stabiliser etc. Even my 1DmkIV though doesn’t have the ability to manually set the input level. As far as i am aware the 60D and the 5D mkII are the only ones with this functionality
The advantage over a 5D mkII are again its cheaper, the flip out screen, plus the 1.6X crop factor which will be perfect for birding to get more effective reach out of your lens.
Hope that helps 🙂 Cheers Dave Stowe
Hi Birding-Aussers,
Just wanted to see if anyone out there can offer any thoughts.
We are planning a visit to PNG in the future and felt that in order to properly record the activities of all those Birds of Paradise which we would hopefully see, then some kind of moving image would be more effective than stills.
Peter, my other half, is quite taken with the idea. He is an experienced bird photographer but has never dabbled with “movies” before. It seems that modern camcorders (e.g. Panasonic TM900) have really decent zooms and can produce good quality material in low light – both essential conditions of bird photography.
Have any of you tried it?? Was it successful?? Any tip and hints??
Rosemary
Rosemary Royle, Wales, UK
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Hi Rosemary,
Agree with others comments –
I work in real estate and all of the professionals I work with who video homes have switched to DSLRs to shoot video – all say superb results and ease of use – Canon 7D will give you the best of both worlds at reasonable cost.
cheers
David Taylor
David and Marg Taylor Brisbane
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Rosemary
I used a video recorder to get some shots of birds while in Denmark a while back. It wasn’t a high definition video recorder, and I found that the results were irritatingly grainy and not a pleasure to see. I’d much rather have a high megapixel DSLR. You can take dozens of shots and while you don’t end up with a movie that shows behaviour, you’ll end up with something that you’ll be pleased with.
Having said that, though, the video did get me a Wryneck!
Bill
On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 5:53 PM, Rosemary Royle wrote: ===============================
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Rosemary,
The trend these days seems to be to using DSLRs with HD video capacity. Much more versatile than video cameras. You have the choice of either video or still and most are much more compact than many HD video cameras.
Carl Clifford
Hi Birding-Aussers,
Just wanted to see if anyone out there can offer any thoughts.
We are planning a visit to PNG in the future and felt that in order to properly record the activities of all those Birds of Paradise which we would hopefully see, then some kind of moving image would be more effective than stills.
Peter, my other half, is quite taken with the idea. He is an experienced bird photographer but has never dabbled with “movies” before. It seems that modern camcorders (e.g. Panasonic TM900) have really decent zooms and can produce good quality material in low light
Have any of you tried it?? Was it successful?? Any tip and hints??
Rosemary
Rosemary Royle, Wales, UK
===============================
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http://birding-aus.org ===============================
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Rosemary,
In the low light conditions you are talking about, you should consider a Canon stills camera with video. If you’re flush, the Canon 5D Mark II. I use the Canon 550D, which is amazing and retails at probably <$1000 now. If you want close-up, it's a cropped sensor, so it works well with any existing zoom lens to get medium-distances. If you're talking about birds displaying in the tops of trees, it might be worth considering using it with something like a Swarovksi scope and UCA adaptor. This doesn't perform so well in low-light but is still very good. Here are a few examples (note, these are quite heavily compressed): This video of Golden Bowerbird was shot in the bottom of a VERY dark forest. The conditions were montane forest just post-dawn and it was raining (you can hear this on the video). It's about the worse conditions possible. An ex BBC Nat Hist Unit cameraman I know uses the same gear and raves about how good it is in low light conditions. http://bird-o.com/2010/07/23/the-man-with-the-golden-bowerbird/
This video uses the Swarovski and UCA adaptor. It’s at a distance of about 30m and was in full sunlight. http://bird-o.com/2010/06/30/little-kingfisher/
This video is of Chestnut-breasted Cuckoo and was taken below the canopy. It was about mid-morning but overcast. So it was just bright enough. http://bird-o.com/2010/07/05/chestnut-breasted_cuckoo/
There’s more information about the digiscoping setup here: http://bird-o.com/2011/01/19/digiscoping-with-swarovski/
Hope this helps and good luck. Let us know what the results are.
Regards,
Simon.
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Simon Mustoe Tel: +61 (0) 405220830 | Skype simonmustoe | Email simonmustoe@ecology-solutions.com.au
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