Hawk pictures from Lighthouse Field

[ritaxis]

I don't know about the baby hawk Nadine says she saw. What I saw today was just an adult hawk hanging out on a snag, turning its head in a direction that forced me to photograph it into the light. I could get really close to the dead tree, but since it is what? 50 feet? tall -- my house is 25 feet at the peak and if I imagine two of them stacked on top of each other I guess that's about how tall it is -- there were diminishing returns when I got too close because I had a bad angle on the thing.

So these are cropped, not resized, and that's just the quality you get with the zoom out past the max optical and into the digital (is it necessarily the case as I have found that the digital zoom is just not as clean as the optical? -- and do other cameras send you through the optical zoom and then stack digital on top of it when you run out of optical?). The nice fellow has been begging to buy me a telephoto lens and I finally said he can, and a wide-angle one because I keep not being able to get a good handle on landscapes, and he can buy me a tripod too because if I'm going to do more bird and landscape pictures I need to be a lot steadier.

Comments

[ellarien]

Mine beeps when the focus locks on, which could be a disadvantage when trying not to disturb the subject. (On the other hand, it got me that curious highland calf a couple of weeks ago.)

I'm starting to hanker after a bigger and better camera than the one I have (more zoom, real macro), but the thing about mine is that I can and do take it pretty much anywhere without worrying about weight or bulk, and I doubt I'd get nearly as much use out of a more expensive one.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

What I hanker after is:

12X optical zoom
full manual override on everything plus the basic auto features
takes ordinary rechargeables and not some stupid proprietary thing
takes a standard SD disk and not some stupid proprietary thing
choice of through-the-lens or screen viewing
some reasonable number of pixels.
snap-on, snap-off lenses
a lens cap that stays on
fits in a large jacket pocket

I have the batteries and disk and viewing, and the pixels aren't bad.