Great Crested Flycatcher - Revisited

A couple posts back I shared a few pictures that I took of a Great Crested Flycatcher using my digiscoping rig, and commented on the results, my technique and my expectations. All in all, my jury is still out on digiscoping, but I am definitely going to be trying it some more. For example, next month Tammy and I are going to spend a week in and around Yellowstone National Park, and I expect that there will be more than a few chances to photograph far away wildlife in a setting that is controlled enough for me to digiscope.

The phrase "controlled enough" is key. I am not skilled enough with the digiscoping rig yet to be able to quickly point to a new, or just moved target, and then get it in focus. I still need a non-trivial amount of time to do that (relative to the time I need when I am simply using my camera with a telephoto lens).

As an example, here are a few more photos of the same Great Crested Flycatcher, but these were not digiscoped. Instead these were taken with my normal camera configuration: hand held Canon EOS 30D + Canon EF 100-400mm 4.5-5.6 L IS. I think the quality of these are better than those I obtained when digiscoping, but more importantly, I would never have even gotten these photos if I had been trying via digiscope. My chosen subject was way too active for me to keep up with it when using the scope.

Great Crested Flycatcher

In my previous post, I mentioned that while at DGCA I happened upon a pair of Great Crested Flycatchers tending to a nest. They would both be out searching for food at the same time, each returning to bring nestlings a nice juicy bug. Of course, that is an assumption. I only really saw one bird at a time, so maybe it was the same one each time.

The comings and goings of the flycatchers were good fodder for one of my purposes of this particular trip: practice digiscoping. So I set up my tripod, scope and camera, attached the remote shutter release, and then began trying to get a bird in scope long enough for me to get it in focus and take a few pictures.

The results are varied, with none of the pictures coming out excellent. A few were underexposed. Many were slightly overexposed. None had the bird in super sharp focus. As I hinted in the previous post, I am not sure if I need to change my technique or my expectations. Here are a couple of the photos that I felt were on the better end of the menagerie that I captured.