Birding

We love to travel to find new birds and participate in a lot of bird counts. We also created a Guide to Birding Field Guides and host a collection of over 300 birding links from all over the globe.

Conservation

While our main focus continues to be birds, we promote other areas of conservation as well. Conserving land not only benefits wildlife, but is hugely beneficial to people as well.

Outdoors

We love all sorts of outdoor activities, especially hiking and spend a lot of time outside with dogs and horses. We are working to produce more articles on all sorts of outdoor fun!

Photography

Every week we bring you Bird Photography Weekly. We periodically talk about our adventures in digiscoping. Feel free to browse our photo lifelist.

Article in: Photography

Digiscoping Tip – Aperture Priority or Av Mode

Digiscoping Tip: Setting the aperture to a low F-stop number is best for digiscoping, keeping the bird in focus at a long distance. Choose the Av (Canon) or A (Nikon) mode to enter aperture priority. This allows you to decrease the F-stop as far as your lens will allow you (F/1.4 for our Canon lens). This also lets the camera shoot with a higher shutter speed, a benefit when shooting through so much glass and reducing vibration.

We have never taken a photography class so much of how we shoot is good ‘ole trial and error. The beauty of digital photography is that it enables you to make adjustments as you go. Look for more tips and tricks soon!!

← Previous Next →

6 Comments or Trackbacks ↓ Jump to add comment ↓

Lana says:

Thanks for the tip (particularly as both of my cameras are Canons.) Still working on getting a digiscope someday…maybe.

Posted on: February 24, 2009 @ 12:41 pm
Mary Carlson says:

Eddie – is the F-stop related to the lens rather than the camera itself? I have an Xsi Rebel with an 18-55mm lens on it and the lowest F-stop only went down to 4.5. I also tried an 80-200mm lens and the F-stop starts with 4.5, but then moves up to 5.6 when I zoom to 200mm. What kind of lens will give me a lower F-stop?

Posted on: February 27, 2009 @ 1:12 am
Larry says:

Sweet Sweet Sweeter than Sweet! I’m going to attempt digiscoping soon. I only have a Vortex Sanpiper 65mm. I don’t know if the optical quality will be good enough to make it worthwhile.If nothing else, it should give me good practice though.

Posted on: March 1, 2009 @ 4:38 pm
don dickerson says:

I have a nikon p6000 and a swarovski 80 hd, do you know of an adaptor/s for this
combination? Thanks. I enjoy your website.

Posted on: March 31, 2009 @ 3:40 pm
Dawn Fine says:

Thanks allot for these tips. I have tried digsicoping sometimes with good results..I enjoy all the info you have here on your blog.
thanks

Posted on: July 8, 2009 @ 4:56 am
The Birdfreak Team says:

Dawn – You’re very welcome!! We try to give away as much of what we learn as possible… growing the collective knowledge of birders is what we desire

Posted on: July 8, 2009 @ 8:14 am