---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Nature's Coast Oregon <info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, May 14, 2022 at 3:27 PM
Subject: [obol] Interesting Bird Photos (That Aren't Actually "Photos"!)
To: OBOL <obol@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Since my "rainy-day birding blues" returned in force with the damp, dreary
weather I awoke to again today, I thought I'd post a link to the *Photo
Project* that helped me retain some sanity during the damp, dreary days of
March (and January and February and April too).
Bird-related, yes — you'll see Townsend's Warblers, Ruby-Crowned Kinglets
and more backyard faves ... but see them with a "twist" that I suspect will
resonate most strongly with birders of the camera-toting variety.
While I think most viewers will find the images themselves of reasonable
interest, it's perhaps more notable to point out here that they are not,
technically speaking, "photos" at all — rather, they are single frames
extracted from 4K video. I will fully understand if you do not believe this
when you see the crisp detail these images reflect ... because neither did
I!
As all serious photophiles know, still images extracted from video simply
are not good quality — especially not when scrunched down in physical size
(1280x720) and ultra-compressed into tiny file sizes (sub-100K) for
fast-load web display, as all these images are. *Wait -- what?*
Mass-megapixels and high-end imaging equipment not required? Well, let your
own eyes judge for themselves. Here's the link:
https://naturescoast.org/uncategorized/the-bedroom-bird-blind/
My purpose in posting here is not to change anyone's mind ... but simply to
encourage anybody who might be on the fence about getting into nature
photography. If you've been waiting for the price of entry (as much as $20K
to mount a 600mm Canon lens to a MK IV-5D or equivalent camera body) to
fall below $2K, then the time to dive in might finally have arrived. If the
quality of the images above strikes you as "good enough," then you could
get started today with the same 24-to-600mm "point-&-shoot" Sony RX10-IV
that I used to capture these "photos." And like me, you might be amazed by
the 4K video I captured them from with the same device!
As I said, let your own eyes (and wallet) be the judge as to whether we've
reached a "good enough" point of quality-vs-cost in the world of digital
bird photography. (Regarding video quality, the Telly Award my last
production won <https://naturescoast.org/media/video/winter-wild/>
satisfactorily answered that question for me, and in fairness to Sony, the
extracted images above would most certainly be qualitatively superior if
imaged via the RX10's dedicated 20-megapixel photo mode.) But if this level
of quality says "good enough" to you, your fence-sitting days could be over.
So ... birds? Of course this is ALL about the birds — why else would all my
still-photographer friends each have literally *hundreds-of-thousands(!)*
of bird photos on file? As none of these prodigious shooters has yet
provided me with a satisfactory answer when I ask, *"what do you plan to DO
with your hundreds-of-thousands of bird photos?"* ... well, I suppose
that's a question best left to a future rainy day.
Here's part of what I'm doing with mine ... hope you enjoy,
Howard Shippey
Newport
