Bird Shots

On January 3, 2002, Metro Atlantans awoke to a two to five inch blanket of snow. And when that happens, anybody with a lick of sense will STAY OFF THE ROAD! The snow also covers up a lot of natural bird food, so your feeders are guaranteed a lot of traffic while it lasts.

Here in Lawrenceville we got a little over four inches of snow.

So, with nothing else to do, this seemed like a good time to try experimenting with "bagging some birds" (photographically, that is!). So, with the 80-320 zoom fitted and the ZX-50 on the tripod, we gave it a "shot". Considering that we were shooting through a dirty window, and the light was less than optimum, we weren't too disappointed.

Later, we decided not to waste any more film shooting through the window. And we finally got around to hooking up the MX, and then the ZX-M to a cheapo spotting scope we had bought some time before. It functions as a 500mm f5.6 lens in that configuration, and the results were real encouraging.

At first we just had a few images on this page. But, as our collection grew, we decided a revision was in order. So, off of the bird list page, if a species has a link associated with it, follow it to see our attempts to capture them on film.

As usual, all images were taken by us, unless otherwise stated. Some were taken with the old MX and spotting scope combination, but the MX has since been replaced by the ZX-M. Pictures since are all taken with either the ZX-50 or ZX-M, with either the 80-320mm zoom, or the 500mm spotting scope. Occasionally a shot will be taken with the 28-80 zoom on the ZX-M, or the 35-80 zoom on the ZX-50. Most of the shots are from our "watching post", a window overlooking the back yard, with the camera on a tripod, but occasionally we will go "mobile", with the 320 zoom handheld, or deploying the tripod out front or somewhere else.

Selected images are then scanned at 200 or 300 DPI and cropped.

Check back often!