Graeme had a new buddy scope to attach to his larger telescope. One of the reasons for purchasing this particular model was the ability to be able to attach his camera to it and use it as a 545mm lens as well as use it for its normal telescope purpose.
I had seen some wild turkeys in one of the fields along Eagleson Road so off we went to try out the arrangement.
For comparison purposes I took this shot of the turkeys with my 80-400mm lens (uncropped) and then headed over to an adjacent field to see if I could photograph a Canada Goose or two while Graeme experimented with his camera/telescope combination.
In my search for geese, I got this one flying headless across the fields :-).
Graeme Here… the scope is the William Optics ZenithStar II ED 80mm, and here is a shot (50% crop) from the scope. For the photography side of life, it’s an f6.8 lens @ 545mm.
Of course, by the time I had it all set-up (took me a minute to adjust the camera as the telescope is fully manual on the D90), most of the birds were walking off into the hedgerow and the adjacent field or had just disappeared.
The following picture was me tracking flying Canada Geese using a ball mount.
Once Graeme had finished with testing out his new piece of equipment, we put everything back in the car and traveled a bit further down the road to photograph stretches of the Lower Jock River where it travels through Richmond and on downstream toward the Rideau River.
Graeme again: The following shot was taken in a bit more stable location rather than being beside a busy and fast roadway like I was for the turkey shots and shows that I will be able to get sharp photos with a higher magnification using this adapted telescope system than I have been able to do with the 500mm f8.0 mirror lens that I sometimes use for photographing wildlife.
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