Thursday September 15, 2005
Two Birds
Two Birds

This photo was taken using a digiscoping technique. Digiscoping is a method of bird photography that pairs up a digital camera with a spotting scope. I used our refractor telescope.

One of the problems you'll run into, especially so with lower grade optics, is color fringing, where the edges of objects have a magenta cast or glow. As I understand it this is caused by chromatic aberration: the different colors of light dispersing on different paths after going through the lens. This is common in refractor telescopes, the more expensive apochromatic lens correcting much of it.

These birds were in the trees at the back of our yard, about 80 feet away and 30 or so feet up in a tree top. The original image has quite a bit of magenta/blue fringing and even with many photoshop adjustments I couldn't really get rid of it. Still, I like the composition and converting to black and white retained much of what I liked. Not sure about framing though, originally there was a border around the whole image, then I limited it to just the bottom. They seem a little less boxed in this way.


Massimo • 2005-09-19 10:31pm

I like it as it is, without the other three borders, as it looks like a graphic element merged with the browser page.
jerry • 2005-09-22 10:53am

Thanks.
Ted • 2005-09-24 10:06am

You can remove much chromatic aberration in Adobe Camera Raw. Use the "Lens" tab to see the controls. This will be faster and maybe better than manually de-saturating around the edges of fringed objects, without resorting to grayscale conversion.
jerry • 2005-09-24 11:22am

I tried, it didn't seem to make much difference.

I'll send you a photo and you can give it a shot.