Don’t Go Too Far Part II

Posted by Philip in Follow-up, Photo Technique

As promised I have an “interesting” setup of a tethered photo session.  I wanted my camera outside pointed at a bird feeder.  You’d think we had the only bird feeder within 20 miles with the number and variety of birds that visit throughout the day.  Many times I’ve tried to sneak around the corner and make a decent photo, but they have all be fleeting attempts with the best photos being blurry tail feathers.  So I ran a USB cable with an extension out through the window.  Set the tripod so the camera would be at the level of the bird feeder and the camera equipted with my 70-300mm lens.  This is how it looked:

Once setup I could fire the camera manually inside the house using either the EOS Utility or using my iPod and the On-One DSLR Camera Remote.  Over the period of one hour I made 200+ photos.  The settings I used were good for what I was looking for.  There are still some tails and wings in a motion blur.  If I wanted to make things tack sharp, I would have used a flash, but I was afraid that a flash would scare the birds away, since the camera was still rather close to the bird feeder.  I may try that another day.