Wildlife Photography and Saintbridge Balanceing Pond



Yesterday I went out for a walk locally. I havnt been able to take photos for a long time and I wasn’t expecting my phone to let me take any but it surprised me and let me take some photos 

It set off again later when I really needed it but luckily I worked out why It did that other than I cloud storage so I tryed to sort it out  then it started working again but Im going to get a Nikon camara.  in the meantime 

Today I managed to take a couple of photos at Saintbridge Balancing Pond and took some photos of 2 Gray Squirrels and Teal



When I went to Saintbridge Balanceing pond my devices battery went quiet quickly even though  it wasn’t long since I charged it and by the time I got there my devices played up and then ran out so I mainly counted the birds I saw and used my new spotting scope at last. I just need to take photos with it next time. 

There was 11 Black headed gulls 1 male Teal and 2 female Teal then they were joined by more later so there was 5 and that was about all of them there. 

There was 4 Moorhens 1 Magpie and 20 Mallards Duck there was also 5 Woodpigeons and feral pigeons. And there was a Blue Tit and Long tailed Tits After that the sun was very low and it got cold so it was time to go. I saw 5 gray Squirrels Chipmunk on the way back 



  • Modern smartdevices are very good at manipulating the subject and background to obtain good quality photo where subjects are quite close.

    With regard to the battery failing, I guessing it was very cold, and batteries do loose power quite quickly when cold. If you are able to, and not easy with tablets unlike phones, insulate the tab where you can.

    Older batteries do loose capacity to store charge as they get older and that can become very apparent on colder days.

    Not something you can do with tabs, battery packs are sealed within the the case, I often take two battery packs with me keeping  one in a trouser pocket, and when the first pack looses power, swap them around, and keep alternating until the time comes where they have no usable charge, warm or cold.

    Apart from the technical lesson, nice photos Zo.

  • Thanks. Yes they weren’t very far away but I used my new Binoculars and zoomed in  with my device I was useing  I find even though they are good at that they just like with compact cameras sometimes you can be quiet close but the camara will make them look abit further away than they actually are rather than showing the true Distance sometimes and you dont see as much details of the subject as what you see but when you use them with binoculars it makes them look larger and reveals more details unlike with wild plants you cant just walk right up to birds and take a close up shot otherwise they will become wary exspeacialy Squirrels so binoculars can come handy with devices. I have found devices are better than compact camaras When i comes to distance but still don’t allways shiw the accurate distance between you and the subject. and the more you zoom in the more blurry it can get so it tends to be better with closer subjects.  Yes it was quiet sunny but still not warm and there was ice at the pond and the water at the big pond there had frozen so some of the birds were walking on it. My devices did run out very quickly so I used my new scope when I looked through my new scope to a part of the pond I was trying to make the ice out then suddenly mallards took off head first towards my scope  and gave me abit of a surprise and made the person next to me laugh   exspeacialy since they were a lot closer through the scope  than they really were  and the temperature dropped so much I got very cold later. 

  • Zo Clark said:

    Thanks. Yes they weren’t very far away but I used my new Binoculars and zoomed in  with my device I was useing  I find even though they are good at that they just like with compact cameras sometimes you can be quiet close but the camara will make them look abit further away than they actually are rather than showing the true Distance sometimes and you dont see as much details of the subject as what you see but when you use them with binoculars it makes them look larger and reveals more details unlike with wild plants you cant just walk right up to birds and take a close up shot otherwise they will become wary exspeacialy Squirrels so binoculars can come handy with devices. I have found devices are better than compact camaras When i comes to distance but still don’t allways shiw the accurate distance between you and the subject. and the more you zoom in the more blurry it can get so it tends to be better with closer subjects.  Yes it was quiet sunny but still not warm and there was ice at the pond and the water at the big pond there had frozen so some of the birds were walking on it. My devices did run out very quickly so I used my new scope when I looked through my new scope to a part of the pond I was trying to make the ice out then suddenly mallards took off head first towards my scope  and gave me abit of a surprise and made the person next to me laugh   exspeacialy since they were a lot closer through the scope  than they really were  and the temperature dropped so much I got very cold later. 

    I'm probably going to dig myself a deep hole here, but I'll try and explain the differences between the different zoom categories. So I'll apologise upfront if I make a hash of it and everyone thinks, what the heck is he on about.....

    I’ll try and explain simply how the zoom on a smartdevice works.

    There are two types of zoom:

    • Optical zoom
    • Digital zoom

    And both work very differently.

    The optical zoom is a live view, where the pixels used remain the same whether you zoom in or out, and you continually see what the camera sees.

    The digital zoom as you zoom in, you actually stretch the image, which means you see less of what the camera sees and therefore stretches the pixels which reduces the number of pixels used to display the image, and often will make the image appear more blurred.

    When you zoom in on a smartdevice, and also the final photo, you actually crop the photo and stretch it across the screen. This means the coloured pixels which make up the photo are stretched, making them bigger to enable the image to fill the screen.

    The images below might hopefully show what I am trying to say, albeit crudely, without digging a hole for myself, where you see what the smartdevice camera sees and photographs, followed by what you zoom in to.

    What the smartdevice lens sees and records.

    Each square represents a pixel.

    What you zoom into using a digital zoom

    You can see on the second image the second image the squares are larger. That is because when you zoom in, you actually crop the original and stretch the desired pixels across the same area that the first image covered, but removing the unwanted pixels, which are in black.

    The stretching of the pixels, also reduces the number of pixels on the screen, which gives the impression the image is blurred.

    The next two images, using a subject rather than lines and a blank background, might help show the difference in clarity

    No zoom or digital cropping of the original subject.

    Digital cropping/zoom, note how much more the sheep's head is blurred, compared to the previous image, which if you click to enlarge, should stay reasonably crisp.....

    If I've managed to explain that clearly, great, if not, soreeeee.....