Digiscoping – what is it and why do it?

Have you ever wondered how they get those detailed photos of birds and other critters you see on web pages?  Well a lot of times the photographer is using some huge lens set up that sits on the front of the camera like a bazooka. You often see these at sporting events where press photographers are taking pictures.  Nature photographers like to use these as well.  I have spoken here about Yellowstone several times and have indicated that there is a need for significant lensatic enhancement if you want to view the wildlife found in YNP.  It is not a requirement but it will enhance the joy of you visit considerably. But you say, I can’t afford a $1,500 – $5,000 lens for a every couple of years trip to one of our national parks. Amen brother neither can many of the rest of us. 

And this is where digiscoping comes in. Digiscoping is fundamentally using an inexpensive point and shoot camera attached to a spotting scope to achieve similar lens characteristics to those of much more expensive camera and lens set ups.  Before anyone gets too high on their horse, it is not the same, but for $400 ($250 for the spotting scope and $150 for the point and shoot camera) it is close enough for those of us who do not have our photos published in national periodicals. These set ups can provide upwards of 1,000 mm lens equivalence.  Now the light (f-stop) issues are going to be intense so depth of field will be an issue and chromatic (color) integrity won’t be as good as a high dollar lens but for the average viewer it will be amazing and reasonably priced.

The hobby of digiscoping has had its impetus from the birding community.  The birders have been putting more and more pressure on themselves to be absolutely certain of the species of bird they are documenting. To this end they require an inordinate amount of magnification out of their photographic equipment to be absolutely sure that that is a hooded merganser versus a northern shoveler.  Thanks to them this whole hobby has flourished and is quite fun whether you are a birder or some other kind of critter watcher.

Let’s spend a few minutes considering the stuff you need to make this happen.  First a point and shoot camera.  I use a Nikon CoolPix P5000 and a Nikon D 70.  Lest we get into a discussion about stuff that does not matter, any camera over 5 mega pixels will do fine so don’t worry about pixel counts. The bigger concern is the magnification needs to be down under 5X! You can google all of this stuff and find out lots more than I know about it but suffice it to say that cameras with less than 5X magnification will let enough light into the camera and keep aperture size large enough to make your photos not vignetted.  When photos vignette you get a picture of the object with a dark circle around the object which then has to be cropped out with some fancy or not so fancy software.  Keep your camera under 5X ( I never go over 3X) and you will much happier. 

Spotting scopes come in all sizes and flavors.  Something to consider is actual cost.  Sounds obvious but it is not.  Some scopes come without a lens which means you buy a scope for what seems like a good price $300 – $500 and when it shows up in the brown truck, and low and behold you need a lens.  So $150 later your reasonably priced scope is now pretty expensive.  Now here is the real kicker.  It is as important what tripod you use as it is what scope you buy.  Expect a good tripod to have a $300 – $400 price tag.  Now do you have to have that, nope, but eventually that is where you are headed.  So run to Wally World and pick up a Velbon that will get you by but know that it is just the hors d’oeuvre.

Other things to concider include scope lens caps, rain covers, camera mounts and adapters, a bag or case to carry this stuff. Cabela’s and Bass Pro are good places to find cases and whole kits that will get you ready for digiscoping. So shop around and see what bargains you can find. A tip. check out the bargain caves at Cabela’s and Bass Pro for returned stuff that you may be able to latch onto for a really low price.

Now a few comments on spotting scopes.  You are looking for something in the 20 – 60 power.  This is usually noted as 20 – 60x. Which means that stuff looks 20 – 60 times magnification.  There are fixed power scopes that are 28x or 35x or 60x and there are variables that are noted as 20 – 60x and so on.  I like the 20 – 60x variables.  They let me “find” things at 20 power and then get in real close at 60x. A word about the other end of the scope this is also much ballyhooed.  60mm and 80mm are the 2 most popular but you will find everything under the sun from 35mm to 105mm. 60 and 80 both work great and will do everything you want for most digiscoping needs.  and even if you pick out a 20 – 60x X 80mm you will only use it at 20x for digiscoping. But for just fun viewing, and there will be lots of that, you will want a high power magnification.  When that grizz is 3/4 of a mile away the 60x will be in use quite a bit. And folks will be walking up awkwardly and saying, “would you mind if I looked through your scope?” And you puff out your chest a little and say, “sure go ahead, my wife just got me this for our anniversary.”

So who makes these spotting scopes?  Bushnell, Kowa, Leica, Nikon, Leupold, Swarovski and a host of others. If you Google digiscoping you will be amazed.  B & H Photo and Eagle Optics and others provide valuable help in picking out your “package.” I mention these two because I have purchased equipment from both and have found them to be honest and trustworthy in their products and their service before and after the sale. One final word about scopes, Swarovski is the creme de la creme.  There stuff is known the world over as really high quality stuff and their prices reflect that quality.  Do some surfing and you will see what I mean. So if you wish to spend $2,500 – $3,000 you can but I use Bushnell products and have been very happy. I have an Legend spotting scope in 20 – 60X60 and an Elite in 20 – 60 X 80 and find them both to be excellent.

So we have a scope, a camera, a tripod and more memory cards than we think we can use and wonder, am I ready to go? Maybe an entry on photo storage devices is coming soon huh?  Nope you are missing the one ingredient that Mr. Golderg is working on as we speak.  You have to hook the camera to the spotting scope or (and there are a number of really good digiscopers who do it this way, Laurence Poh the father of digiscoping) be able to hold the camera very still while taking your pictures. These adaptors are found in every form and price range.  From $35 – $500 (Swarovski again) and attach your camera via the screw at the base of the camera to the lens via a compression screw system.  None of these are perfect, although the Swarovski one appears to be pretty close, They will allow you to take very nice photos of things so far away you cannot tell with the naked eye what it is you are looking at.

And the real fun of it all is having that stranger come up and say, ”what are we looking at? I promised my daughter she would see a grizzly while we were on vacation and we are leaving today without seeing one, are you guys watching a grizzly.”  And your response is, “yeah, right down there is a grizzly laying on its back and over to the left of it are 15 wolves from the Slough Creek pack, sunning themselves.  Bring her over and let’s let her see some wildlife.” At that moment the price of all of that stuff is completely forgotten and it is all about humans relating with humans about the wonder of nature.

Seeing your way through Yellowstone National Park

And as you get up in the morning Old Faithful is letting off her steam as you walk to breakfast.  The sun is just coming up over the Absaroka Mountains and the thin alpine air has a crispness about it that is nothing like what you are used to on a day in the middle of May.

A quick bite to eat and in the car you go in search of what ever this gigantic volcano/park has to offer.  As you head out of the parking lot you turn south and east (this seems counter-intuitive) heading for Grant Village.  Along the way, the maximum speed limit in the park is 45 miles per hour, you see small herds of buffalo and several stray elk singles. The cow elk have not yet dropped their calves and appear heavy and their gate is awkward but they always stay well away from the many tourist.  You observe that even though the park is mostly closed there seem to be a good number of tourists out and about.  If you have not been in the park in July you have no idea what crowds will be arriving in just a few short weeks. Enjoy the “light” crowds as they only continue to build all through the season and until Labor Day, when they will again wane until this time next year.

A quick note about the wild life.  You are spending time amongst a set of wildlife that you may have only seen in zoos and pictures. You are in their living room and should be respectful of their wildness.  It is after all the thing you came to see.  Please don’t take your fancy cameras and other optics and try to get 10 feet away from these critters.  They are wild! They have a set of rules and requirements you likely do not understand. They are in a life and death game of survival and if they do not eat this afternoon then they are in danger of not surviving. This is true of all of the parks’ animal life.  Some are hunters and some are hunted but all must have safety and food to survive.  Leave them alone and observe them for their beauty at a distance. The higher on the food chain the creature the more important it is to keep your distance.  You have no idea how quickly a mature grizzly can cover 100 yards. Suffice it to say a human can do it 10 seconds and a grizzly can do it about twice that fast! Just consider how far you can move in 5 seconds.  Can you get back to your car? Find your car keys, unlock the car and get in? What about the baby?, your spouse. These are wild animals with food, safety and territorial issues on their minds.  You are just a curious food source to them, and while they are conditioned to avoid you because you cause them problems, if they are unwell, super hungry or unable to catch their normal prey you can become their next meal without any regrets.  It happens several times a year in one of our parks that humans are the victim of grizzly attacks. Imagine if they can kill another 400 – 600 pound grizzly, that you, defenseless as you are, are an easy target for them.  You are not their primary food source but if you are all they have for food, you will do nicely, thank you very much. So please be careful and respectful of their wildness.

So we finally get to Grant Village and head north toward Hayden Valley.  As we round a curve we see 20 cars all stopped in the road and another 50 cars pulled off to the side in both directions.  Park forest rangers are directing traffic and every make of camera is in someones hand and everyone is walking at a fast clip up the hill to see whatever is causing all of this commotion. Bears are less than 30 days out of hibernation and it is mating season so it might be a bear. It could be a grizzly or a black bear. It might just be a herd of American bison blocking the road. They often just lay down in the roadway and chew their cud for 30 – 60 minutes The rangers have a special recording they use to entice the sleeping buffalo to move on.  This in itself is an interesting photo op. Maybe it is wolves or something even more interesting. It could be mountain lion which would make this a truly rare event.  Their are less than 50 lions in all of the Yellowstone National Park eco-system.  No, it is even stranger than all of those, it is a cow moose and her young calf.  The last few years have seen a resurgence of moose in the park.  For a number of years they were almost as rare as lions and now are seen pretty regularly. They are solitary critters so you won’t likely see more than a couple at a time but they are quite a find. So you grab a couple of quick snap shots and back in the car heading north toward the valley.  On your right is the beautiful Yellowstone Lake and as you near Fishing Bridge you begin to look for the osprey nest you heard someone talking about during dinner last night. You ask yourself, “what in the dickens does an osprey look like?” Your co-pilot whips out their phone to try and make an internet connect to check Wikipedia for a picture of an osprey. No such luck, even with Verizon, cell service is pretty spotty. None the less on the right side of the road is a nest the size of your hotel room and that must be it.  Alas the osprey is out shopping for groceries and you do not get a glimpse of the pair for now.

As you head further north you see a few folks with spotting scopes all trained to the east into a flat area along the Yellowstone River.  DO NOT STOP, THIS IS THE SIRENS SONG AND IT WILL COST YOU DEARLY, BE FOREWARNED. You stop anyway and with camera and binos (remember the binos from yesterday’s discussion?) you casually walk up to where everyone is intent on something off in the distance. Then someone says, “there he is, man is he a beauty.  Is that his kill or did the Haydens make that kill last night?” meanwhile you have your eyes crawling through the glass of your binoculars trying to see what they are seeing.  Your brand new 7 x 50 Bushnell binoculars are not getting the job done (the guy at Wal-Mart said he uses these all the time to ”glass for deer” and has found them to be the best binos he has ever owned” as your eyes strain to see anything that looks like what they are talking about.  Finally you do what every one of us has done before and say “what are we looking at? and where is it we are looking?” A woman says “a grizzly is laying on an elk kill made over night by the Hayden Pack and he ran off the last of the wolves about 30 minutes ago and has been feeding and laying on the elk ever since.” And then she says something that until you hear it it makes no sense and once you do it makes total sense.  “OK, can you see the two fir trees with the fallen down log next to them down by the river’s edge? Go about 50 yards further beyond that and there is a big clump of brown grass. The bear is right behind that.  I can’t seem him right now but that is where the kill is.” This dialog will go on all day long so enjoy it for the small piece of Yellowstonecana it is. Describing where something in the park is to someone, when that object is more than 400 yards away maybe even more than 1,000 yards away is a lingo all its own and is almost as useless as it reads.  But most park visitors understand that we are all here to observe nature on its’ own terms so they want to assist you in finding the object of discussion.  Unfortunately most of us have little or no prior experience viewing objects at that distance and our vocabulary at describing natural landscape items and flora is woefully inadequate. And thus these silly but necessary conversations occur.  And amazingly enough you finally find the object in your binos and almost instantly say something like “boy that is so small it can’t be a bear” or ” are you sure that is a grizzly?” You have watched The National Geographic channel as they watch grizzlies in Alaska and they are HUGE! This thing is so small you can’t even describe where it is and with the naked eye it is almost impossible to see.

Then your spouse ask the woman who has been assisting you in your viewing challenge if she can look through her spotting scope.  Then your wife says “oh, yeah, he is a pretty light golden color” “boy he is a big one isn’t he.” You are about to make one of those watershed decisions, and I encourage you to think this through completely before doing it.  But you won’t, you turn to the woman and say, “mind if I have a look?” Don’t do it.  I beg you don’t do it.  At least think it through.  But no, you bend over and peer into the telescope shaped thingy and all you see is a black circle that keeps moving around. She says “can you see it?” Your spouse says “it is right by that clump of grass by the log. You say, “I don;t see a thing.” ”The lady suggests you take off your glasses ands have a look.”  You indicate you have not had you glasses off during waking hours except to clean them, in years.  The woman smiles and says “we can adjust the diopter for your eyesight” and quickly turns a knob and….. low and behold (wives please note this moment in time as it was one of those several thousand dollar moments) you say, “ohhhhhhhhhh, there it is.  Holly sh-t look at that.  It is like he is right here.”  You ask, “can I move this around a little” and you say, “ahhhhhhh, geez is this cool?”

I will leave you with one thought.  I warned you about doing it and you went ahead and did it. You ignored my advice and heeded the Siren’s song.  That is what free will is all about, but it is gonna cost ya. So for the next few days maybe weeks and maybe months you will spend a significant amount of time on the web checking on spotting scopes and grovelling for a few extra bucks in the budget so you can buy your first scope.  I warned you.  A little later in the week I will talk some about scopes, their features and uses and the ways you may be able to talk the CFO into letting you spring for an “inexpensive” one.  Note to all CFO: you are aware their are no inexpensive ones that will meet his needs but play along and let him squirm a little, it is as much a part of the process as the research he is doing.

Anyway enjoy the rest of your day in the Hayden Valley and take lots of pictures as this is an especially scenic part of the park (not the most scenic but it is very scenic) and get back in time for a good dinner and a restful nights’ sleep.  You will be dreaming about spotting scopes and wolves, and grizzlies and whatever else you saw today.  But sleep well my fellow park visitor as tomorrow you will have an opportunity to see the most beautiful (in my opinion) section of the park and the wildlife will be more abundant than anywhere to this point and you are without a spotting scope! I warned you.

You must be up early as you have almost 2 hours of driving to get to your next destination.

None the less, have a good night sleep listening to Old Faithful erupting as you drift off…………..

So you are going to Yellowstone, what can you expect?

Welcome back everyone.  We have discussed the planning phase of making a trip to Yellowstone National Park (YNP) and so I thought it might be fun to relive a couple of trips I made this year and see what kinds of exciting things you can expect to see. We made a trip in the spring just before the park opened and then another trip back in the fall after the park had closed.  When I say it was closed don’t think of unable to enter.  Just imagine that all/many of the park services (stores, gift shops, hotels and motels and other tourist support businesses may not be open because they are open with the tourist season and close when the horde has headed back to school and work.  So we headed west and north in mid-May for a couple of weeks of touristy fun.  We came up from the south through Colorado hitting Pikes Peak and coming up through Jackson and the Tetons entering YNP through the south entrance.  The scenery  coming up through the Tetons is truly breath-taking for a flat-lander.

 

Wild life was not as abundant as I had expected but the scenery will leave you speechless. Your travel will bring you ever higher in elevation north through the Tetons and finally into Yellowstone Park. As you enter you will purchase a pass from the ranger station for (I think) $25 for 7 days entrance to the Grand Tetons National Forest and YNP. We were headed for Old Faithful Inn so our excitement was pretty out of control and with the exception of several elk our wildlife spottings were nil.  Not to worry the best is yet to come.

After getting settled at the Old Faithful Inn we did a little exploring and sat for a while and watched the Old Faithful geyser spewing steam and acting like it was about to blow.  The schedule is posted in the Inn and at the rangers information office and it was not going to blow for quite a while, we just did not know any better.  Basically it spouts about every 90 minutes and a quick web search will give you more information than I can provide plus a live streaming video camera feed of Old Faithful. So seeing it in person might probably be anti-climactic, no way.  This is a truly beautiful event and do not leave the park without at least one eruption on camera. What you will learn is that you are in the midst of a gigantic volcano and this is just one of many many geysers and they are all located within fairly close proximity to where you are standing watching Old Faithful. So get a good night sleep and let’s get started in the morning heading to the Paint Pots and fumaroles so we can finally get to see some critters.

So where do we eat in the park?  We ate our evening meals for 3 days at the Old Faithful Inn dining room.  Pretty pricey but an easy meal and then a stroll and head off to bed. Make sure if you wish to eat there, that you make reservations early (like before you leave home!) The Inn has NO television in the rooms. So everyone will have to find their own ways of amusing themselves. Get up early and grab a bight or nosh on some of the stores you brought with you and get ready for a day that will live in your dreams for ever.

The geysers and other volcanic landscape features will keep you busy most of the day so pack a snack and plan to be out until evening. As you leave the Inn parking lot you will see critters and that will remain the predominant theme all day long.  Buffalo, elk, mule deer, black bears, maybe a grizzly and lord knows what lesser sized creatures you will happen upon.  If there is one thing I encourage all to purchase before heading to the park is more camera memory than you can imagine you will use. If you have a photo storage device (I use a 30gb FlashTrax drive and love it) then you are set, if you have enough memory for a long days shooting.  If not them buy twice what you can imagine you will use or borrow it and prove me wrong.  I bet one in three folks I talked to had been out for 2+ weeks and were only taking low res pictures on a “once in a lifetime” basis because they did not have any more memory. My problem is I can’t tell a “once in a lifetime” photo op from an “ah forget it” photo op until the next day so I take it and go on.

Tomorrow we head up into the Hayden Valley and will likely see bears (maybe a grizz?) and there is an outside chance we will see a wolf! Have I suggested that optics are a topic of serious consideration?  You cannot be overly equipped with optics for Yellowstone.  You have terrain that stretches to far off mountains and valleys that seem to go one for miles (well actually, they do.) Binoculars and spotting scopes are really something to be seriously considered.  If you have the finances and several trips are in your future then do the research for a good quality spotting scope ($500 – $2500) and get hooked up.  Without it you will need to be prepared to ask to look through a scope of one of the many watchers.  They will be glad to let you look, by the way, so do not be too shy to ask.  Part of the fun of owning a good spotting scope or a good set of binos is letting others see what you have “found” in some far off mountain plateau. So now you have been forewarned.  Gals this is generally a “guys” topic.  Guys enjoy the gear side of things.  But that, like all other generalizations is proved wrong more often than not so gals if you are gear heads then listen up and spend a couple of months searching out the web sites that will give you plenty of good information regarding spotting scopes and get your credit cards ready for that purchase.  I think this weeks’ post might be on spotting scope selection and optics and why they are important, or at least why I think they are important. In my travels they are repeatedly an important topic of discussion. While I am at it maybe we can discuss digiscoping.

Another good night’s sleep and tomorrow we will head into the Hayden Vally and have a better chance of spotting grizz and wolves, bald and golden eagles and who knows what else. G’night……………..