Taking remote Photography up a notch!!

Following on from my last post and taking the learning that failure delivers, I decided to change the setup around.  Firstly, I managed to get hold of a suitable log to act as a focal point for the feeding birds.  Using a router I made a "tray" in one end and then positioned it with the final shot in mind, so that the background would be as uncluttered as possible.



Upturned log with a "tray" routed into the top.

Of course just sticking the log out would not guarantee any feathered visitors so I filled the tray with live mealworms which did the trick in a matter of minutes!

The idea of the tray rather than just a pile of food was to keep the food below the surface of the log so it looked clean on the photos (that didn't really work as to get to the good stuff they flicked the other food onto top!) and to stop the mealworms from escaping.

My plan then involved placing the Laser at one side of the log, shining across the "tray" to a light sensor on the other side.  I then planned to focus the camera where the beam crossed the tray so if the beam was broken the camera would trigger and take the shot.

However, trying to mount the laser robustly so that its narrow beam bridged the gap and hit a 4mm target proved impossible.  I need to rethink that one, the sensors are tricky over a couple of inches so this gap was nigh on impossible.  So it was back to the microphone!

So technically the setup was the same as before but now I had a better target, better background and knew that I needed to frame the shot better so that I'd get more usable shots.  I put the camera into Shutter Priority at 1600 to ensure that it would freeze motion, set ISO to 800 so that the camera had enough "headroom" to adjust Aperture to give consistent light levels (to compensate for differing light levels as clouds go past the sun etc).  Then sat back and let it run.

This was my favourite shot, you can see the microphone under the birds tail and the scattered food on the top of the log.

I had good shots of a Robin and a Blackbird too.

In the final analysis, yes its an improvement, but theres still a lot more to be done.  The issues I have at the moment is that as sound is used to trigger, there are a lot of images with nothing going on.  Thats because the microphone picks up birdsong, dogs barking, aeroplanes etc etc and snaps away!   It would also be difficult to argue that the setup wasn't obtrusive and thats not good.

A friend wanted to try the setup at his birdbath but the sound of the water bubbling would constantly trigger the camera, and I didn't fancy getting water in the mic either so we need another solution. 

Watch This Space!!