Peekaboo

I digiscoped these juvenile Great Horned Owls at Malheur NWR.

Beautiful shot John. Composition, exposure, color, DOF and sharpness are all spot on. My only suggestion for improvement is to clone out the hint of the dark branch in the URC.


BTW...what is digiscoping? Using a digital camera as opposed to film? Just curious.

hmmmm to my eye this is a VERY soft image. Other than that capturing/observing these guys must have been VERY groovy!!!

I know I'm on a groovy binge this weekend - bare with me man....DOH!!

good capture. these guys always seem to be obstructed by branches. it is a little soft but digiscoping doesn't give you a lot of leeway. I'm curious; what is the equivalent focal length and f stop with your digiscope.

To catch both of these guys looking at you is terrific. I don't see many owl shots with a pair, or a pair that are so animated. Great shot.

Thanks for the comments!

Hans, digiscoping is afocal coupling a camera to a telescope. In my case, this means I use an adapter to connect my Nikon Coolpix 8400 digicam to my Nikon Fieldscope III 60mm ED spotting scope that I use for birdwatching.

Arrgh, the sharpness issue. While digiscoping has some severe limitations (primarily it's light starved with such small diameter lenses), at times it can produce quite sharp pictures. I'm suspicious the softness in this photo is more my eyes and monitor in processing. I still struggle with hitting that sweet spot where a photo looks sharp on most monitors (note that above Hans thought the sharpness was okay, while to both Rick and David it appears soft). See what you think of this redo, on my monitor it looks a tad over sharpened, but I would appreciate feedback.

David, using Jay Turberville's digiscoping calculator, I'm usually shooting at an equivalent focal length of just over 1400mm and an effective f number of 5.54.

Oops, the file was too large. Here's the photo.

The second image does appear to be a little sharper. I like how the guy in the back is peering around his buddy.

What a catch. This is a rare shot indeed!!

Must have been amazing to see these two. I think that your first image is okay even tho a bit on the soft side. Very nice shot.

The sharpness looked good on my laptop LCD at home. Now that I look at both images here at work on a CRT, I see the softness in the first image. The second doesn't look oversharpened on the CRT.

Thanks for the update. I think I'll routinely sharpen just a bit more for posting on the net than I do for prints, and hope that will hit the sweet spot just a little better.