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by Elliotte Rusty Harold.
Original Post: Prospect Park November 1
Feed Title: Mokka mit Schlag
Feed URL: http://www.elharo.com/blog/feed/atom/?
Feed Description: Ranting and Raving
I spent a few hours in the park today, mostly just to experiment with the camera, but I still managed to tally 26 species including my first Buffleheads of the year:
Mute Swan
American Black Duck
American Black Duck x Mallard (hybrid)
Mallard
Northern Shoveler
Bufflehead
Ruddy Duck
Great Blue Heron
Black-crowned Night-Heron
American Coot
Ring-billed Gull
Herring Gull
Rock Pigeon
Belted Kingfisher
Red-bellied Woodpecker
Downy Woodpecker
Eastern Phoebe
American Crow
Tufted Titmouse
White-breasted Nuthatch
Ruby-crowned Kinglet
Hermit Thrush
American Robin
European Starling
Chipping Sparrow
Song Sparrow
White-throated Sparrow
Northern Cardinal
Ring-billed Gull, 1st Winter Plumage
Prospect Park, 2009-11-01
Camera-wise my best results so far seem to come from the Tamron 28-300mm DI VC lens fully extended at 300mm, about f/8, with the 580 EX II flash. I also discovered today that the camera’s AV mode is a little conservative with shutter speed. In manual mode I can definitely set it faster than the camera thinks wise. Grain’s noticeable at ISO 800, though I can clean that up a little in Lightroom.
It also occurred to me to compare the binoculars to the zoom. Turns out a 200mm lens (on a APS-C sensor) is roughly equivalent to a 10x pair of binoculars: i.e. the field of view is roughly the same. A 300mm lens should be equivalent of about 15x. I’m not sure why the binoculars are so much brighter and clearer than the equivalent pictures. Best guess is that we haven’t yet developed CCDs that are equivalent to the human retina. There are 120 million or so rods in each eye (and another 6 or 7 million) cones, which is still close to an order of magnitude larger than the number of pixels in most cameras. Plus I suspect the eye is more responsive than the CCD.
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