Saturday 21 August 2010

Visitors to the Pond Waterfall

On Thursday I had one of those all too few flashes of inspiration. Why not use the intervalometer that I use for time lapse photography to monitor the pond waterfall. To that end I set up a 350D on a sturdy tripod at the opposite end of the pond and set the electronics to take a photo about once every twenty seconds. Over three hours it took nearly a thousand photos a few of which did manage to capture a few of our feathered friends.

Nothing out of the ordinary as yet. The first was a House Sparrow peeping to see if it was being watched.

House Sparrow
They are very communal birds so there are normally several together.
I wonder how many you can spot here:

How Many Sparrows?

Easier to count this time.

Sparrows at the Pond Waterfall

And finally a male Blackbird with a Wood Pigeon.

At the Pond Waterfall

As I said, nothing out of the ordinary but I have learned a few things. The idea works, just have to be patient. My chosen spot, where I needed to have a telephoto lens with fixed focus, meant a shallow depth of field. The weeds in the way are too far in the pond to reach for pruning. I have sussed a better spot nearer the waterfall where I can get closer and probably use a 50mm lens. Of course it rained most of yesterday and is raining again this morning so I will have to wait for finer weather to have a second go.

The basic set up for time lapse photography can be seen here. In case you are wondering it doesn't take very long to check a thousand photos. I copy them to the hard drive (that takes the longest) and use IrfanView to view them. I just keep hitting the 'next' key and with the view being the same in each photo any changes show immediately. Those with activity I move to a folder and then delete the rest.

I use an old second hand camera as this technique is hard on the shutter / mirror mechanism and can give a years wear in a day. To make the camera battery last the session I turn off the LCD display as that uses a lot of energy in displaying each shot.

6 comments:

  1. I like the possibilities here. Did you make the intervalometer? Beyond my skills but Hamel do one for reasonable money I understand.

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  2. Hi Adrian. Yes my gizmo was home built but surprise, surprise I found this on eBay:

    http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Time-Lapse-Photography-Timer-Intervalometer-DSLR-/150472316336?pt=UK_Photography_DigitalCamAccess_RL

    which is sold with a choice of connectors for different cameras. Check down the list to make sure yours is available as I see one of the Olympus connectors is unavailable, but can be ordered.

    Looks very interesting and versatile as well as being much more portable than my setup!

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  3. A great flash of inspiration John. I can see that set up producing some amazing results in the future.

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  4. Hello keith. I am sure there are more than just the well known local visitors to the waterfall but many disappear as soon as they spot movement. I must look at the idea of having a passive IR detector to trigger the camera. That may give more reliable results.

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  5. John, this is fantastic! What a great idea. I counted four sparrows in the second shot and six in the third. They are well camoflauged!

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  6. Hello Wilma. From time to time I have spent ages sat outside trying to photograph birds at the waterfall and usually got nothing. Far easier to let the camera get on with the job while I do something else ;)

    In fact there are 6 sparrows in both photos. You need to look at the full size photo on Flickr to be able to pick them all out in the second shot.

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Thank you for visiting. Hope you enjoyed the pictures. Any comment, or correction to any information or identification I get wrong, is most welcome. John

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