Are you a bird watcher and have you marveled at the neat digital bird photography you see in magazines and on the internet? Well, there is a word for people who take those photos - it is "professional". You and I are not professionals and there is word for us - it is "amateurs". Oh, there is a corollary to the two words: professional has lots of very expensive equipment; amateur has - shall we say - modest stuff. I will tell you in a few words how I get the kind of photos that have given me a great deal of enjoyment . The bird photos on this site are all mine, by the way.

My equipment. My camera is a Canon S21S and it cost less than $400.00 new. It has three crucial features: it has 12 X optical zoom (ignore the digital zoom), it has a 5 megapixel resolution, and it has stop action software feature. I have added a doubling extender lens to increase the power of the zoom. If you are not technical, then read these notes.

12X Optical zoom. This simply means that, by using the zoom feature on the camera, you can seem to be  12 times closer to the bird than you actually are. Another word for zoom could be "magnification". It is very important. A camera's digital zoom is merely a way of enlarging a photo and is not really significant.

Megapixel resolution. This is a number which tells you how finely grained your photo is. Think about a newspaper photo: if you look very closely with a magnifying glass you see that the black and white photo is really a bunch of black dots on the page. If there were more black dots per inch, then the photo would look much better or "sharper" as you looked through the magnifying glass. Digital images do not use dots; they use very small bits called "pixels". Obviously, the higher the resolution (ie., the great the megapixel number per inch), the sharper your photo and the better it will look upon magnification.

Stop action software. Now, this is sweet. If you have used a high powered pair of binoculars, you know that, as you increase the magnification of the glasses, you start to experience bouncing because you cannot hold the things still. A 12 power camera is a very powerful binocular instrument and the problem with bouncing can be very severe. Without support like a tripod, your photos will blur and you will not be happy. Ah, but if the camera has stop action, then, as you press the shutter button, the image is momentarily frozen on the surface of the camera. This eliminates the likelihood of blurring. You can actually hold a camera in your hand and take photos.

Extender Lens. This is a lens that simply attaches to the front of camera and increases the magnification or zoom by its own power. Thus a 2X extender will change a 12X camera into a 24 X unit. Pretty cool.

Taking pictures. Well, what can I say? It is just a matter of learning and trial and error. That is why digital is so awesome. What do you care how many bad pictures you take? I doesn't cost a thing to erase the bad stuff. Oh, yeah - do not use the cheap card that comes with the camera. Buy a high volume card so that you can store a lot of photos during a single morning's walk. 

When the bird is sitting still. This is obvious. Get as close as you think you can without making it fly away and fire away with your camera. Think about what is back ground and what is in the foreground. Your camera will automatically focus but it might not focus on the bird and you will be disappointed. Take care to have the bird in the center of your view-finder and you increase the chances that the camera will focus on the bird itself. I usually take at least 5 pictures to be sure that I will like one later. I have taken as many as 40 of the same bird in the same place.

When the bird is flying. Did you scare the poor little birdie? OK, the chase is on. If you try to track it with your camera and extender set out all the way you will probably miss it entirely or set a very bad focus. But, you will try it anyway and find out for yourself - I did. If the bird is in flight, I am finding that I need to remove my extender, keep the zoom out all the way, and trust to my ability on the computer to bring the bird in close enough to look good. It is a learning experience. That's an old term for lots of pain and failures before you get it right. Please be aware that, if you set your camera to take the largest file size (se below) you will have the best luck with cropping and expanding on the computer later. That is another way of saying use the setting that provides the greatest number of pixels per inch (highest resolution).

One more thing: Very important! Somewhere in the menu of your camera you find a setting for the size of the photo. It will always be something like 1024x768. It will always be "number x number". Use the largest setting you can find. It will use up card space faster (which is why the big card) but it will give you more picture to play with later because it will, effectively, increase the resolution of the camera. When you are playing with the photos on the computer, this is crucial since it allows you to magnify without loosing detail.