Birding Tips 3 - Digibinning with the Swarovski Optik Snapshot Adaptor

The Alps are mountainous.
Walking here is not always easy.
and dragging a telescope and digiscoping setup with wherever I go is not always an option
(or at least not a preferred option ;-)

Particularly now in winter, I am finding very few good digiscoping moments and so I am tending to take advantage of the snowy winter wonderland that is Tirol to go walking, back-country snowshoe hiking, and skiing and most of the time my great big telescope (a beautiful Swaro ATS80) gets left at home.

But I invariably have a pair of binoculars with me when I go out hiking (well, you never know when you are going to come across a feeding/breeding flock of energetically brightly coloured crossbills). Then, if I do come across something interesting, I can always snap off a few photos through my binoculars.

Taking photos through binoculars (digibinning) can be a lot of fun, but is not always easy and I do a fair amount of digibinning with varying success. Sometimes the pictures are gems. Othertimes, not so much. The most important factors are:

1. the amount, direction and quality of the light, and
2. the distance the bird/subject is away
   

Obviously, the more light, the faster the shutter speed can be, and the greater the chance of getting a sharp photo. Digibinning seems to be particularly sensitive to light direction/angle. Backlit subjects and lighting from in from of the objective tends to give the images a washed-out blue tinge that is really hard to deal with/get rid of and even if there is a fair amount of light about, backlit images (even mildly so) can be very hard to expose correctly without blowing out the background. Getting the right light direction is crucial to taking the shot. As with all photography, the quality of the light also has a great influence on how your digibinning photos turn out. Softer (not uni-directional) light is best, so early morning and late afternoon can give you good light quality, but remember that at these times, the quantitative lack of light may make it difficult to get an adequate shutter speed.

The second point - the distance to the subject/bird - is related to the first. If your subject is relatively distant then you may need to use more of your camera's zoom, which reduces your maximum shutter speed quickly. The other consideration is that our little point and shoot digital cameras often have rather poor optical zoom quality and digibinning photos suffer noticeably (and quickly) when you crank up the zoom. Always use as little camera zoom as possible.

In terms of camera and binocular setup, there are three key considerations:

1. binocular quality
2. camera quality
3. joining or adapting device (snapshot adaptor)

The quality of the binocular you use for digibinning is paramount. I cannot stress this enough. Under the same conditions, a mid-range or cheap binocular will never work as well as something like a Swarovski binocular. At the moment, I tend to pick up my Swarovki EL 8,5x42s first. The optical quality is incredible, they are bright (with a 42mm objective), have a good field of view, have good eye relief (important for digibinning), and are colour neutral. This last point is - for me - rather important for photography through binoculars, and - for example - the Zeiss Victory FL are blue skewed - a killer for digibinning.

Obviously, the quality of your camera will make a difference to your photos. This effect is minimized by keeping the ISO rating as low as possible, and by avoiding using the zoom (optical or digital) as much as possible.

Swarovski Optik have produced a lovely little adaptor that makes taking photos through binoculars incredibly easy - the snapshot adaptor. Below is a video of Clay Taylor (Swarovski Optik North America's resident digiscoping and optics expert) explaining how to use swarovski's snapshot adaptor.



Happy birding
Dale

p.s. if this post interested you, you might also want to see this older post.

Snowshoe tour in Tirol - Schlick 2000/Fulpmes in Stubaiertal

Schlick 2000 is a popular alpine skiing resort just outside of Innsbruck, Tirol, in the Stubaier Valley. The skiing is quite good - particularly in December and January with lots of natural half-pipe things for snowboarders and skiers to play around on. There are also a number of winter walking trails in the area and one trail designed especially for snowshoe walking. Yesterday, I decided to check it out.

Schlick 2000 parking lot in Fulpmes, I took the Gondola up to the middle station. From there, one heads out behind the ski school (to the north) and quickly gets in to the woods. The trail gently makes its way up through the woods and is very well sighnposted; orienteering - even after heavy snows - should be no problem whatsoever. I had thought that the skiers would detract from the walk, but they were far enough away for the trail to be very peaceful and wonderfully enjoyable.


View Larger Map

In the first half of the snowshoe trail, I came across a couple of Common Crossbill flocks, noisily feeding in the Norway Spruces (Picea abies) that dominate the woodland. Their German name - Fichtenkreuzschnabel - refers to their preference for spruce (Fichte) which pretty much sums up where you always tend to find them. The groups I came across were very vocal - I suppose they are probably getting ready to breed now while the spruce have an abundance of seed.

I also came across the occasional treecreeper (Baumläufer), some Coal and Great Tits and Nuthatches in the lower, denser forest. Well, maybe dense is not the best word to describe the forest there. In the lower sections of the trail, the canopy is fairly closed, but the heavy snow meant that the under-story was rather open and made it very easy to explore a bit off trail.


Further up the trail, the forest canopy thinned and eventually the forest petered out. Nearing the top of the trail, one is rewarded with great, big expansive views over the Stubaier and Wipp Valleys and their surrounding peaks. Taking a tea-break, I scanned the cliffs and peaks for Alpine Ibex and Golden Eagles without success. A pair of Spotted Nutcracker surveyed their lands from treetops at the edge of the tree line.


Reaching Schlicker Alm (1645m asl), you can enjoy some traditional Tirolean mountain food (and a beer ;-) before heading back down again. The return could be done back alone the trail you came up, but if you packed a Rutschblattl then getting down the sledding track is much faster and a whole lot of fun. I have no idea what I would call a Rutschblattl in English but it is this little plastic plate that you sit on, and a handle that comes up between your legs. It kinda looks like a miny, flimsy plastic shovel and is mainly a kids toy for sliding down little slopes. Anyhow, they cost almost nothing and weigh even less so are perfect for taking on snowshoe tours. Getting back down slopes (or sledding tracks) with a Rutschblattl is a whole lot easier than walking back down with snowshoes on! I have to say that maintaining complete control of the thing is probably never going to happen for me; your bum tends to take a few knocks; and they were not designed for high-speed toboganning but they are a whole lot of fun.

Happy birding (and snowshoe walking)
Dale

Diginocking in the mountains

After last weeks' fun taking photos through my ELs, I decided to do a little more of it this morning. Last night we had taken a hike back in to the mountains to a most gorgeous of spot: Solsteinhaus, a hut set way back in the mountains on the edge of my favorite mountain in the whole wide world (Große Solstein - on the right in the first photo).


I was admittedly lazy in getting up this morning, but when I got out there was still something to be seen. The Alpine Accentors were not very vocal at all and we ended up playing an interminable game of hide and go seek. I was not the one hiding. No useful photos there.

But the Ring Ousels were far more obliging. Weary, but far more interested in singing from the "tree" tops to be too worried about me. I don't have the little Snap Shot Adapter anymore - it was borrowed - so these were all taken by just holding my camera to the binoculars. As you can see, I am still learning how to focus effectively.

I also spent some time trying to get some shots of the Crossbills, but they were proving elusive:

catching one taking off was completely by accident:


Here is a habitat shot:
Mostly grassland with some stunted trees (mostly below head hight). Also about were some Grey Wagtails, Wheatears, a couple of ravens and a few other little bits and pieces.

A couple of digibinned insects:

This digibinning thing really is a whole lot of fun. and it means that I can still take bird photos even if my huge digiscoping setup is a home.

Happy birding
Dale