I still used the film camera sparingly while visions of digital cameras danced in my head – that was while I was even wide awake! Finally, I could not hold off any longer and took the old photographers’ leap from film to digital SLR. It was after all my birthday, so why not give myself a present. So off to Canoga Camera my wife and I went. The salesperson was indeed friendly and helpful. Of course per recommendation, I chose the Canon 300D kit (which included the 18-55mm lens) then the current rage in digital SLRs. When the salesperson asked which body color I wanted - Silver or Black, and being the Silas Marner that I am, I chose Silver because it costs $20 less. (Bad choice – Silver reflects light and that would surely bother my bird subjects and, besides, Black looks more “professional”). There I went: bad bird photographer right off the bat.
I kept my son’s 70-300 zoom and used that with my 300D for my venture into digital bird photography. The gentleman was right, I could see my shots almost instantly. What it meant was that now it won’t take me a week to find out how bad a bird photographer I was! Somehow I was using my new camera like it was a film camera – that is, I was very selective with my shots as if I do not want to waste any frame with a bad shot. I cannot even use up a 512MB Compact Flash card in a half a day’s session, shooting in jpeg at that! For me the subject must be in a good pose before I click on the shutter button. Now bear in mind that I’m shooting birds, creatures of constant motion. And even when my subject cooperated and posed for a while, the pictures still came out soft (a photography term to indicate that the subject is not sharp, as in the edges are “soft”). The results of my endeavors have been consistently of poor quality. It kept me pondering what could be wrong. Frustration was beginning to nag me.
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| Orange-crowned Warbler |
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| Chestnut-sided Warbler |
After a long hiatus which culminated in the death of my first wife in July, 2003, I have begun birding again. In October, 2003, I joined the Pasadena Audubon Society and participated in several of their birdwalks. Also, I began constantly monitoring various Yahoo listservs on local birding activities. In October, 2004, a month after I had remarried, there was a flurry of messages saying that there were a lot of warblers seen among the tamarisk trees along Laguna Road in Camarillo (henceforth referred to as Laguna Tams). I convinced my new wife, Cynthia, who was a complete tyro when it came to birding to come with me and see for ourselves what the shouting was all about. I borrowed my son's Canon film camera (I forgot what model) with a 70-300 zoom lens attached to it.
When we arrived, there were already several birders there, all of whom were quite excited as they kept murmuring "American Redstart" to everyone who joined the group, all the while pointing to small olive-greenish birds up in the trees. Being newbies, we were not aware that this bird was an uncommon visitor to southern California. As I was trying to photograph the various warblers (including the Redstart, but failing badly there) that were cavorting among the tamarisks, frustrated at re-learning photography at so difficult subjects, a gentleman approached me. He was carrying a camera with a huge lens (it was a 400mm). He noticed I was still using film and he went into this tirade of how digital photography is so much better even for one who is not an "expert" (I guess he can tell by my struggles that I was new at this). To prove his point he showed me the pictures he took just a few minutes earlier. "See?", he said convincingly, "you don't have to wait for your film to be processed to see your photos". He recommended the Canon 300D, then the current rage in digital photography. "Check out Canoga Camera", he said, "they have very helpful guys there and their prices are lower than most camera stores".
A week later, after looking at the pictures I took at Laguna Tams (some turned out to be OK like the pictures above) and recalling the images I saw from the gentleman's camera, I decided to go digital. Little did I know then that I would be hooked into bird photography. The joys and sorrows of which will be the subjects of my musings as a bad bird photographer.
