Digiscoped Short-eared owl - a short story

[Richard Stern]

I went out to some local dirt roads recently looking for some Short-eared owls that had recently been seen, I saw the first one nice and close, aimed my D300 with 300 f/4 +1.4TC out the car window, pressed the shutter and nothing happened. After all my movement, cursing, checking all the complex camera settings and other repeated attempts, the owl eventually flew off and left me thinking that there was something wrong with my camera ..... till I realized that I had left the CF card attached to my laptop at home in order to transfer all the pictures of the family at Xmas dinner the previous evening. Then I realized that if in the unlikely event that I saw another owl I might be able to save the day by digiscoping, even though I have rarely done it successfully from the car. Then after another 15 minutes of slowly driving the dirt roads I very surprisingly saw 6 more together, and one landed close to my car, I set up the scope (Kowa 773) without a tripod on the edge of the lowered window (no bean bag or other support), hand-held the p&s camera (Sony W5) to the eyepiece, jammed the little adapter tube into the extended rubber eyepiece cap, prayed that the bird wouldn't fly, and got some acceptable results - more by a fluke than any planning or skill. Here's one of the pics. Does it work on its own merit?

Richard

[pat lillich]

hey Richard, great story and amazing capture - I never would have thought you could get a picture this clear that way! (and the forgetting the card at home is one of my personal main paranoias.....) really beautiful bird - I hope you get another chance at them with your camera.

[George Cottay]

Nice improvisation.

If I were you, I'd hold on to the D300 and the 300, but this shot is certainly good enough to appear in a Kowa ad.

[Peter Farrell]

I am very impressed with the results you achieved. I am thrilled when I see one owl, but six together, wow.
I have left my card in the computer as weel; but I am lucky as my camera has 2 card slots and I keep a card in both.
Peter

[Julie Kenward]

Richard I'm not deeply familiar with digiscoping (I know a tiny bit about it) but this seems to be the best image I've seen come out of one. I'd crop some from the bottom so about half of the OOF plants get out of the frame and then maybe a touch lighter on the midtones so the body of the owl is a little bit lighter/brighter. I love his dark color against the grass in the BG!

I once saw a wild turkey in my big backyard (I live in suburbia so that was pretty rare!) I grabbed my camera and ran outside and snuck up on him by slowly moving from tree to tree. I finally got within range and went to click the shutter and...yep...no CF card. I could have cried. (I believe I settled for saying some very colorful words!)

So...been there, done that! Learn from it and move on!

[nancy hazen]

I'd say it works! I love this shot!
Nancy

[Ben_Sadd]

This is pretty impressive for a digiscoped image. Well done.

To avoid the card problem, the first thing I do after an upload is complete, before even opening the photo folder, is put the card back in the camera.