Roy's Place

A Moment of Truce

admin — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 22:00:09 +0000

I got out my HD camcorder last week and attempted to shoot some better video of the Hummers at the same time as I was shooting some still photos. I had some limited success and learned a little in the process. This video footage is an example of the intensity of the territorial fighting that even the females do when it comes to a food source. But there reaches a point when a little exhaustion and hunger forces a truce. Even if it’s only for a few moments.

Hummingbird Photos

admin — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 14:35:42 +0000

As the migration of the hummingbirds continues through North Texas we had five or six hummers at our number one feeder most of last week. I think the rainy overcast weather kept them here longer then normal. It gave me an opportunity that I don’t get very often to try taking more photographs of them. I’ve got a D70 Nikon DSLR and a 70-300mm telephoto lens that I’ve used in the past to take pictures of hummingbirds. I’ve not gotten the quality of photos that I though myself capable of getting in the past. With a combination of ideas including taping over all but one of the feeder holes, forcing the hummers to feed where the light would be best and I having my camera pre-focused at that spot to minimize my reaction time to getting a shot. I set up the tripod and camera about 4 feet away from the feeder to let them get used to seeing it by the feeder. Then I stood behind the tripod for a while, again for them to get comfortable with seeing the camera and me. Last week it was partly cloudy ever day and so I spend a lot of time waiting for the right time where I had enough light to get a good shutter speed necessary to get good stop action photos of the wings. I also needed the light to better reflect the iridescence colors of the hummers. After standing for hours and hours, two days turned out very productive and I got some good photos. The only disappointment was the lack of any male Ruby Throated hummingbirds. Of the half dozen hummers that worked the feeder only one was a male and he rarely showed up during the day and when he did it was early morning or just before dusk. So I didn’t get any photos of him. In fact the only shots I got of a male was about 10 seconds on the video I posted earlier.

Below is a gallery of the results of last week’s shooting.

Hummingbird Injured?

admin — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 11:48:54 +0000

The other evening Jan was out on the patio reading and watching the hummers, we’ve gone from two to at least four with the migration in full swing. I even installed a second feeder to cut down on the fighting at the first feeder. We can’t see the other feeder from the patio and so we can’t tell if they are using it very much. They continue to fight over the first one. Shortly after Jan had been out she came back in and told me to go out to the patio, that one of the hummers seemed injured. One of the females had been to the feeder and drank, then it flew towards the patio, went up to one of the patio windows, hovered and then just dropped to the floor! I went out and sure enough she was laying on the patio. She hadn’t flown into the window and I’m sure that she didn’t see her own reflection because of the solar screen on the window. I picked her up and she protested, so I knew she was still alive. I put her in the palm of my hand and she just lay there. I didn’t have a clue what to do with her so I just held her and cupped my other hand over her to keep her warm. I watched her and she watched me. After about 15 or 20 minutes I had Jan get some sugar water in a little shot glass and a swizzle stick. We tried to give her some sugar water as a droplet on the swizzle stick by touching the end of her beak but she didn’t act interested. None of which sounded good. A normal healthy bird wouldn’t have just stayed in my hand. But then I just removed my hand completely and she just decided to fly away. I guess we’ll never now what her problem was. This was one of those times in which I didn’t bother to get the camera out of my pocket. I guess I was more concerned about her then getting a picture. I can now say that I’ve held a hummingbird in my hand!

Ruby Throated Hummingbird Video

admin — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 12:29:08 +0000

I’ve recently converted this web site to the WordPress application and as I work with it I add plug-ins. The latest plug-in is the Flash Player. This a test of the player plug-in with a piece of video footage of my Ruby Throated Hummingbirds. The documentation for the plug-in wasn’t clear on which codex of MP4 it supports and so I’ve had to create some test files of the various codex and see which one works. I found that “H264″ was the only codex that I use that worked.

As for the video itself, I’ve had a hummingbird feeder out all summer but no visitors until August. Apparently after the females have raised their young they start roaming for better resources. First I had one and then a couple weeks later another female showed up and the battles began. Now I have three females and occasionally one male shows up to feed. The three females are constantly battling over the feeder and so yesterday I bought a second feeder and put it around the corner of the house, out of sight of the first feeder so that the alpha female couldn’t see and attempt to control both of the feeders.

We’ve been having rain for the last 3 or 4 days and yesterday afternoon the sun finally came out and so I set up the camera to try and get some better video of the hummingbirds. Specially the male, which doesn’t show up very often. Finally got some good video of the alpha female and a very short piece with the male.

I take the video from the camera, it comes out in the motion jpeg or mjpeg format and convert it to an avi file and then run it through the Handbrake software to convert it to mp4 H.264 format. Sometimes Handbrake doesn’t like the avi file that I create from the mjpeg file and I have do it over. Not sure what Handbrake’s problem is. I think I’m using a down level version, so the next step is to get Handbrake current.

The good news is that web sites like Facebook and Vimeo will take the mjpeg format directly. So to upload to them just requires creating the avi file.

Just to see the difference, I’ve embedded a link to a Facebook version of the same video

And a link to my Vimeo.com version.

Well actually, it looks like the Vimeo video is the best quality. It may be a result of Vimeo converting directly from the large avi file and the WordPress Flash plug-in is working from the re-coded mp4 file. Anyway this was a good first test of my options for streaming video from my site.

“Takes a Licking and Keeps on Ticking”

admin — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 18:38:53 +0000

1974 Vinage Timex digital LCD watch

That was the Timex Watch company’s famous slogan from years back and I’ve got a watch to prove it. Or more accurately, my wife has a watch to prove it. I bought this watch a year or some after we’d gotten married at Buchman Jewelery in Clay Center Kansas where my dad worked as their Watchmaker for at least 35 years. This watch is a 1974 era second generation digital, one of the first to use a LCD display instead of the red LED displays of the very first digital watches. I don’t remember what kind of band came with it originally but my wife didn’t like the band and so we had a Speidel “Twist-o-Flex” band put on at the time we bought it. This watch uses the old silver oxide watch battery. I think the original Timex battery was the “K” battery. Fortunately the “392″ battery is still available and the generic replacement for a lot of different manufacturers original silver oxide watch batteries. They only last about 12 to 18 months in the watch and so I’ve changed batteries and reset the time quite a few times in 35 years. She’s worn it every day for 35 years! How many watches have you gone through in 35 years. I can’t get her a new watch because there aren’t any nice looking digital display watches out there for women and she doesn’t like analog dial watches. The only ladies digital display watches available today are clunky looking plastic sport watches. So she continues to wear the Timex. I guess it’s a tribute to both Timex and to Spiedel for making good products 35 years ago!

Digiscoping

admin — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 18:30:12 +0000

Digiscoping, I first came across the term when browsing in some of the groups in the photo hosting web site “Flickr“. Digiscoping is where you attach either a film or digital camera to a large spotting/hunting scope as a powerful telephoto lens. In some cases the groups and photographers are interested in astronomy and use a different style of telescope that you would use in “star gazing”. In any case, I’d been interested in doing something like that and had a Meade astronomy telescope sitting on the shelf that I’d picked up at a Sams Club 6 or 7 years ago. The first thing was to find a camera suited to this kind of application. I like the Canon “point and shot” cameras and have several of the SD series. Canon also makes a A series point and shot camera with full manual controls for shutter speed and aperture, along with manual focusing capabilities. Plus the Canon A590 has the ability to use a ring adapter to allow the use of standard 52mm filters and some types of accessory lens. Perfect for this kind of application! I found a good forum on digiscoping and bird photography and and specifically using a astronomy style telescopes. I was able to get some of my “newbie” questions answered on what to do and were to start looking for the necessary bits and pieces that I’d need to couple a camera to my Meade telescope.

As I researched for cameras it appeared that the A590 was going to be the last of the Canon A series to have full manual function and it was going “end of life” and that it might be hard to find one. Fortunately I live in the Dallas Ft. Worth (DFW) area and Walmart had been handling this model and so after calling many of the Walmarts in the surrounding area I found a store that still had one left. Well they thought they had one. You see I caught them right in the middle of their major store remodeling and they couldn’t find it and the dept manager wasn’t in, who might know were it may have been stored. So a couple of days later I went back when the dept manager was suppose to be there. She found it and I bought it for $107, not bad considering that Amazon still showed them at $250. The next thing to get was the 52mm adapter ring.

The adapter ring is an option and the Canon brand was $25 and not readily available locally. So I found a third party one on eBay for $8. Ordered it and had it in a couple of days.

The A590 has a chrome colored ring around the lens that hides a slot that the adapter ring fits and locks into. With a small lever located at about 7 oclock, you push down on the lever and rotate the chrome ring about a quarter turn to release it. A lens cap that came with the adapter and you can continue to use the camera normally or attach any number of different filters or accessory lens.

Next I had to get two specially made couplers to go from the adapter’s 52mm threaded end to the eyepiece on my telescope. I ordered these from a website called TelescopeAdapters.com in Florida. After a couple of emails with Robert at TelescopeAdapters.com I was able to figure out what combination of couplers they sold that would work with my camera and telescope. The problem that I had was with my telescope’s eyepiece. A lot if not most eyepieces have a threaded end that is covered by a rubber eye cup. Mine didn’t and so I had to use a universal adapter or coupler on the eyepiece itself. Then a normal T-ring to go from the eyepiece adapter to the camera’s 52mm adapter. These were the pieces I ordered from TelescopeAdapters.com, the universal T Adapter part number UT1 and a 52mm to T Step Ring part number SR52T

After assembling the couplers onto the camera I mounted the camera onto the telescope. Looking for something that I could test the range. I set up a stand in the back driveway.

To the southwest, according to Google Earth’s measurements, 1.4 miles away is a radio tower. So I tried to get a shot of the top of it. Lots of heat wave distortion at that distance but still pretty good. I’m not looking to take pictures of things a mile and a half away but I got an idea of the capabilities of the lens. I probably will use this for close-ups in the range of 100 to 300 yards.

Eventually I’m going to try using my Nikon D70 DSLR camera and some different couplers and attach it to the back of the telescope or the rear port and bypass the telescope’s eyepiece.