For the last several years, I have spent many hours in a blind, trying mostly, to get images of Bluebirds and Tree swallow feeding young. Was not at all successful with bluebirds as the blind seemed to change their behavior so I gave up but did have some success with tree swallows using my D500 /200-500 in 2020, a Z6II with the 500pf in 2021 and last year finally go what I wanted with the Z9 and Z70-200 at 200 in a chair blind nearby. When Auto Capture was announced I quickly tried on a bluebird house right off our patio with the Z9/Z70-200. I was able to get some encouraging auto capture images on test runs on June 14, 16, 17, 18 and 19th, taking a bit over 1000 frames and after some quick edits kept 244 for further looks. Definitely better than the manual efforts prior to June 14. June 20th was the estimate fledge date so I set up to run as long as I could. I set up the camera to be a bit beyond the 4 m min for the 200 lens at about 15 ft. distance. Picture 1 below shows the full FoV; ~ 30 inches horizontally. Shutter was mostly 1/3200 and aperture at f/3.2 except after 8PM when it was 1/2500 f/2.8.
Auto capture parameters where speed 5, size 1 and had motion, subject detection and distance active and both horizontal vectors as well as the for angled one enabled. I expected most motion to be right to left toward the bird house and that was the case but there were some approaches captured form birds coming form behind the house. The full AF aperture. Used 20 frames/sec with max bursts of 15, and a 1 sec before the next trigger. The camera was connected to the USB charger all the time.
Between 7:05 AM and 8:20 PM 1478 frames were captured. 458 were out of focus. Interestingly, some of these were frames between in focused frames. I also deleted another 348 frame that were did not show much interesting; mostly an adult bird perched at the entrance hole. A lot of the remain 676 frames are not great photos bu do illustrated interesting behavior that I will study further. From the start until about 1PM th birdhouse was in deep to moderate shade but after that is was in increasing sun and well lit ag 4PM until about 7:00 yielding the best images. Picture 2 is an example. Picture 3 makes the beginning of the fledging at 5:40PM as the female brings in food but approaches and recedes attempting to the young out. Indeed four of the 5 were gone by 8:15PM and picture 5 ( note the ISO) shows the male delivering the last home meal to the last young was gone by 8:30.
What I learned about auto capture.
Auto capture parameters where speed 5, size 1 and had motion, subject detection and distance active and both horizontal vectors as well as the for angled one enabled. I expected most motion to be right to left toward the bird house and that was the case but there were some approaches captured form birds coming form behind the house. The full AF aperture. Used 20 frames/sec with max bursts of 15, and a 1 sec before the next trigger. The camera was connected to the USB charger all the time.
Between 7:05 AM and 8:20 PM 1478 frames were captured. 458 were out of focus. Interestingly, some of these were frames between in focused frames. I also deleted another 348 frame that were did not show much interesting; mostly an adult bird perched at the entrance hole. A lot of the remain 676 frames are not great photos bu do illustrated interesting behavior that I will study further. From the start until about 1PM th birdhouse was in deep to moderate shade but after that is was in increasing sun and well lit ag 4PM until about 7:00 yielding the best images. Picture 2 is an example. Picture 3 makes the beginning of the fledging at 5:40PM as the female brings in food but approaches and recedes attempting to the young out. Indeed four of the 5 were gone by 8:15PM and picture 5 ( note the ISO) shows the male delivering the last home meal to the last young was gone by 8:30.
What I learned about auto capture.
- The camera gets very hot being powered up continuously. I had the camera protected from bird poop using a STORM JACKET cover over the lens and front and top of the body I am in the process of designing an aluminum cover that will attach to gimble head and allow better ventilation.
- The auto capture algorithm is not quick as a remoter trigger. Picture 1 also happens to be image in which the bird is farthest to the right of over 2000 frames. From my experience with the Z9 and the Cognisys Sabre laser trigger the first image is within 50 msec of the shutter trigger. Now detecting motion does require at least two images which would be no more than 100 msec assuming 20 frame/sec. However, autofocus apparently happens at 120 frames/sec (8msec/frame). Vector calculation should be very quick.
- I am MUCH more likely to get some nice images in a given time interval that what I was doing before sitting in a blind and triggering when I was a bird about to come into the camera FoV.
- Other than a very brief set up, best done a twilight, it is less disruptive to the bird and allow use of shorter faster lenses.
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