[mou] Digiscoping comment

Wed Feb 20 08:28:51 CST 2008

One other thing to note:  It is quite easy to make a web image looks
fantastic.  I can take a rather poor quality image from a technical
sharpness point of view, shrink it to 640x480 and make it look fabulous
with some sharpening and selective constrast/highlight/saturation work
in Photoshop.  Take the same image, look it at in any image viewer at
its full resolution (say 100% zoom at 2048x1536 which would be a
standard size for a 6 megapixel camera) and one can be quick to realize
just how relatively poor the image is.  Just something to keep in mind
when you are looking at web images:  You can't really judge complete
image quality, nor have an expectation of possible results, when
perusing web images.

There are some digiscopers who produce quite nice web-quality images.
There is one from Canada named Ann (I forget the last name) whose work
is quite remarkable honestly.  There are several from Singapore who are
also quite good.

Digiscoping for the purpose of documentation, especially in the first
instance Jim talked about is a perfectly good use and certainly is a
leap forward in a birders ability to document rarities as compared to
10+ years ago.  There was a Pacific Loon that I digiscoped on Black Dog
Lake several years back before I had any of my current camera equipment.
One of my images, poor as it was, and as miserably as the 8x11 print
held up because JPG's just don't upsize well at all, was used as part of
the documentation presented by Drew Smith for the MOURC.  Just an
example of how a poor digiscoped image taken on a subject at great
distance can be used for documentation purposes.  Would I have ever
taken that image and printed it for framing or anything?  Not a chance.
I can't think of a single digiscoped image that I took (and I took many
thousands back 5-7 years ago) that I would look at now with a much more
critical eye and think "this is a good image".  Most birders (and this
is not meant to be derogatory) seem to think any image that has a bird
in it is a "great image".  Look on birdforum.net and you will see that
attitude quite prevalent where people have posted "snapshots" with their
point and click cameras of a bird on a feeder that is blurry and poorly
composed and get told it's a "great image!"   I used to have a much
different perception of sharpness, image quality and image composition
several years back compared to what I do now.  Now I use a loupe tool
inside Adobe Lightroom to analyze critical sharpness on RAW files before
processing anything to convert to a jpg for posting on the web, or for
conversion to a TIFF for printing.

I think John Mikes advice in his post last night was spot on: "My advice
would be to get the right tool for the job. If you want to spot birds,
get a spotting scope. If you want to do serious photography, get some
photographic equipment."

Cheers,

Chris Fagyal

   Senior Software Engineer

   BAE Systems - Armament Systems

   Fridley, MN

   (763)572-5320

________________________________

From: mou-net-bounces at moumn.org [mailto:mou-net-bounces at moumn.org] On
Behalf Of John Mikes
Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2008 7:44 AM
Cc: mou-net at moumn.org
Subject: Re: [mou] Digiscoping comment

One area where digiscoping can hold a big advantage over photo equipment
is weight. Modern, fast telephotos are beasts. A Canon 500 f4 is over
eight pounds and a Canon f4 600 is 11 pounds. And they are just as big
as they sound. So, if you are planning on doing any serious hiking with
your equipment, a digiscoping rig can suddenly become an attractive
thought.

A final thought on quality: although some digiscopers are great and
perform miracles with their equipment, they will never compete with a
photographer and his high level equipment when it comes to sustained
quality captures. They may outshoot the shooter in isolated
circumstances, but the inadequacies of their equipment will always tell
in the long run. 

<a href="mailto:johnmikes at comcast.net" <mailto:johnmikes at comcast.net>
>John Mikes</a>

James Mattsson wrote: 

My two cents worth. My sole reason for digiscoping is to document birds,
something I've not seen mentioned in this discussion thus far.  To me,
there are two situations in which digiscoping is prefered over
conventional long-lens photography: 

1) you wish to adequately document the subject (e.g. a rarity) but it is
very far away (e.g. 150 m+), and 

2) you don't want to unduly disturb the subject and are willing to
settle for a bit less in image quality.

A review of the web will show that some digiscopers produce amazing
photos that are equal to and sometimes superior to many conventional
long-lens photographers. But they are exceptions and digiscoping is very
difficult to master. Like everything, it all depends on what your goals
are. 

There have been many excellent suggestions and opinions expressed in
this discussion.

James Mattsson

mattjim at earthlink.net

EarthLink Revolves Around You.

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