Building a Hide

TelePaul

I'd like to take a few shots of birds that I'm hoping will frequent my Garden when I leave food out for them (as you can already see, this is something of a long-term plan).

I could put together a basic hide in an afternoon with the help of my more DIY inclined brother. But my longest lens is a 300mm...how does that leave me in terms of striking distance? I'm worried that I'd have to place the hide 5 feet away from the feeder to get decent shots (and that's not very inconspicuous!)

Any thoughts?

Roen

What make and modle is the 300 and on what body? Is it a prime or a zoom?

TelePaul

Roen wrote: »

What make and modle is the 300 and on what body? Is it a prime or a zoom?

Canon 70-300 IS on a 350d.

Roen

Ah cool, the minimum distance that that can focus on is 1.05m, which is plenty close. Try get the hide in as close as possible, but I got good shots of finch/tit sized birds from about 9 feet away with the same crop factor and the same focal length.

You may find the ƒ5.6 aperture limiting though unless the light is really good, a tripod will help leave your hands free, so make sure you use one. It's not much fun holding anything up to your face for a few hours!

Best of luck with your endeavour!

TelePaul

Roen wrote: »

Ah cool, the minimum distance that that can focus on is 1.05m, which is plenty close. Try get the hide in as close as possible, but I got good shots of finch/tit sized birds from about 9 feet away with the same crop factor and the same focal length.

You may find the ƒ5.6 aperture limiting though unless the light is really good, a tripod will help leave your hands free, so make sure you use one. It's not much fun holding anything up to your face for a few hours!

Best of luck with your endeavour!

Thanks mate. So you're saying birds are cool with a fairly large wooden box nine feet from where they're eating? That's quite interesting.

deRanged

TelePaul wrote: »

So you're saying birds are cool with a fairly large wooden box nine feet from where they're eating?

they may well be cool with you just standing there with camera on tripod too.
I just set up my tripod to shoot birds at my feeder. it'll take a few minutes for them to get used to you, but it does work. Incidentally, I also use a 300mm lens on a crop body.

TelePaul

deRanged wrote: »

they may well be cool with you just standing there with camera on tripod too.
I just set up my tripod to shoot birds at my feeder. it'll take a few minutes for them to get used to you, but it does work. Incidentally, I also use a 300mm lens on a crop body.

Cool! Any chance of a few examples?

deRanged

no problem.

some birds don't pay much attention.


some get annoyed!

MartMax

Hi Paul,

I came accross this one Italian guy who does a lot of nature photography. Here is his website http://www.juzaphoto.com/eng and I found that couple of his articles are good intro to me.

Marty

TelePaul

deRanged wrote: »

no problem.

some birds don't pay much attention.


some get annoyed!

Beautiful shots!

Roen

Well if you insist. But it's straight from camera, no processing other than a raw > jpg conversion. It's more of a proof of concept than anything else
Click on thumbnail for a bigger image.

TelePaul

mart_max wrote: »

Hi Paul,

I came accross this one Italian guy who does a lot of nature photography. Here is his website http://www.juzaphoto.com/eng and I found that couple of his articles are good intro to me.

Marty

Cheers mate I'll check it out.