Digital Focus: Simple Bird Photography

Become a wildlife photographer without going into the wild.

Dave Johnson

Feature: Use Your Digital Camera for Bird Photography

They're almost like pets: You feed them, watch them, care about them. But the birds you see outside your home or office are free to come and go as they please. Ironically, the arm's-length relationship with your "free birds" sometimes makes them all the more compelling. Have you ever wanted to capture some of these critters in pixels? Equipped with a digital camera and some patience, you can capture images that rival wildlife photos taken in the Grand Tetons.

Choose Your Blind

As any dedicated bird watcher can tell you, finding the right position is half the battle when it comes to taking pictures of birds. They're timid, alert, and sensitive to movement. You should definitely start with a tripod. You'll want to be able to mount your camera and position it so it has a good view of a bird feeder, and then get away from it, so you don't distract the birds.

Ideally, you'll also want to use a remote. Many digital cameras (especially Olympus models) come with a credit card-size remote control, and that's just the ticket to trigger the shutter release from ten or twenty feet away.

Then there's the sun. Where you position the camera depends in large part on the time of day and the position of the sun. Make sure it's behind or to the side of the camera, so your birds aren't underexposed. You might need to reposition your camera during the shoot if you're planning to make a day of taking bird photos.

Don't forget to prep the camera for a long photo session. You'll probably want to work with a large memory card--something that can take a few dozen photos without stopping. And while an AC adapter is not essential, it's really handy. If you plug your camera into a nearby indoor or outdoor outlet, you know you won't run out of juice halfway through the photo shoot and miss a once-in-a-lifetime shot of a starling when it appears in camera range.

Framing Your Avian Subjects

Now it's time to frame the bird feeder. There probably won't be any birds posing for you when you're setting up, so you'll have to consider how birds typically arrange themselves on the feeder. If you have a low-resolution camera, like a 2-megapixel model, you'll want to frame the feeder pretty tightly--which may mean putting the tripod fairly close--because there's not going to be much extra resolution for cropping your pictures.

If you have a 5- or 6-megapixel camera, however, you can frame the shot more loosely in case the bird doesn't end up exactly where you expected. That's because your camera can take really high-resolution images, allowing you to crop away parts of the image you don't like--and you'll still end up with enough pixels at the end to print a high-quality photo.

When everything is set up, just sit back, well out of the way, and relax. When a bird arrives at the feeder, press the shutter release on your camera's remote control to capture an image. You can do that all day long (or until your camera's memory card fills up), and the birds will never be the wiser.

An Alternative: Interval Photography

If your camera doesn't have a remote control, check to see if it offers a shooting mode called "stop motion" or "interval." If it does, you can use this feature to tell the camera to take one picture every few minutes for as long as you like. Then just set the camera to take a series of photos, and walk away.

Obviously, you'll want to set the interval based on how often you tend to get birds. If you have a lot of visitors, set a very short interval. When you come back in an hour or two, you'll have a memory card full of images to review. Using this somewhat random approach to photography can surprise you with some unusual--but very effective--shots.

Dave's Favorites: Make Movies With Ulead's DVD MovieFactory 2

A lot of the questions in the Digital Focus mailbag each week involve digital video basics. For example, "What software do I need to make my own DVDs from videotape?" My answer: Get started with a simple DVD editing program like Ulead's DVD MovieFactory 2. The program costs less than $50; I've found it for as little as $40 with the PCWorld.com Product Finder.

DVD MovieFactory 2 is very friendly to beginners. It features a step-by-step approach to movie making, yet includes some high-end video tools.

You can assemble a DVD from all the ordinary building blocks. With it you can capture video from a digital camcorder, add clips from your hard disk, and even make slide shows based on still digital images.

When it comes time to burn it all onto a silver disc, the program's menu editor is outstanding. You can customize your DVD menu buttons by selecting any frame in the clip to serve as the thumbnail. Want to add more chapter stops? That's easy--you can assign as many chapters as you like. DVD MovieFactory 2 comes with more than 50 templates for the menu screen, and you can customize almost every aspect of their appearance.

MovieFactory's "Fast Editable DVD" feature allow you to change the content on a completed disc, allowing you to add new material. You can also record directly from your camcorder to DVD, which is convenient for making quick archives that don't need special editing treatment.

Bottom line: MovieFactory 2 is a great way to start making your own movies on DVD.

Q&A: Why Aren't Camera Sensors Replaceable?

Why isn't anyone making digital cameras with upgradeable sensors? If I want to upgrade the pixel count in a few years, I want to just replace the sensor--especially if I'm buying one of those digital SLRs that cost over $2000!

--Marc Hanna, Bend, Oregon

Well, Marc, you may as well ask why you can't replace the 35mm tray in your old film camera with a large format film plate--or convert it to digital.

The sensor in a digital camera is a critical component that determines how the camera works. If you made the sensor replaceable, you'd have to also be able to replace the logic circuits, the buffer memory, perhaps even the lens (since the sensor would probably be a different size and would deliver a different focal length). What you ask might not be impossible, but would be far from cost effective. Indeed, I suspect you'd have to replace most of the innards of a digital camera to upgrade the sensor--and if you did that, you'd probably be better off just buying a new camera.

Hot Pic of the Week

Get published, get famous! Each week, we select our favorite reader-submitted photo based on creativity, originality and technique. Every month, the best of the weekly winners gets a prize valued at between $15 and $50.

Here's how to enter: Send us your photograph in JPEG format, at a resolution no higher than 640 by 480 pixels. Entries at higher resolutions will be immediately disqualified. If necessary, use an image editing program to reduce the file size of your image before e-mailing it to us. Include the title of your photo along with a short description and how you photographed it. Don't forget to send your name, e-mail address, and postal address. Before entering, please read the full description of the contest rules and regulations.

This week's Hot Pic: "Macaw," by Michael Chollet, Pompano Beach, Florida

About this week's winner, Michael says: "I took this photo with my Canon G3 when I was on vacation in Orlando last December. I used a larger aperture to blur the background. I liked the bird's colors and decided to make it a portrait to capture the bird's details. I shot it with the sun against the macaw, giving it a nice lighting effect."

We want your feedback! Send your comments, questions, and suggestions about the newsletter itself to comments@bydavejohnson.com. If you have a question that you'd like to see answered in the weekly Q&A, send it to question@bydavejohnson.com.

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