Note to self: learn how to use the flippin' camera . . .

Jock Elliott

Hall of Famer
Location
Troy, NY
My wife and I take a wonderful stroll through Oakwood Cemetery yesterday.

Given the strength of the small waterfall at the top of the ravine:

HX400V Oakwood waterfall 007.JPG

we decide to visit the other end of the ravine to see another waterfall that is near the bottom. There is a trail from the top that we could have taken, but it is steep; the trail is likely to be muddy; I am wearing tread-less shoes, and I have no desire to road test my health insurance by inadvertently body surfing the ravine.

So we decide to loop out of the cemetery, take a couple of surface streets down to a parking area for a bike trail that intersects the bottom of the ravine.

We're motoring slowly out of the cemetery, my wife at the wheel, myself enjoying the mellowness of the day, when my wife says "Whoa . . . what's that? . . . It's big . . . I can see white . . . It's an EAGLE!"

(An aside: for wildlife photography, the better half and I function as a sniper-spotter team. I snipe the pictures, and my spotter has what I can only describe as preternaturally freakish distance vision. The first time I got a picture of an eagle, it was she who asked "What's that at the far end of the dam?" when I could only make out that there might possibly be something there or maybe not. At 600mm e, it was revealed to be an eagle eating a fish.)

Stop the car, I yell, diving out the door with the HX400V in hand. An eagle is a big bird, way bigger than, say, a crow. But the sky is even bigger, and the eagle is steadily climbing. Anyone who uses high mag telephoto lenses will tell you that one of the problems is getting the Thing You Want in the field of view at high magnification. I zoom out, point in the general direction of the eagle, start zooming in. I detect a fuzzy blob in the field of view, but the autofocus won't lock on. The fuzzy blob disappears. I repeat the process several times until I can't even see the fuzzy blob.

I need to practice, I tell my spotter. Yeah, but we saw an eagle, she says.

This AM while fooling around with the HX400V, I notice something under the "Scenes" menu. It's called ADV Sports, and it does a couple of interesting things. First, it seizes control of the focus ring on the lens barrel and turns it into a Fast Zoom ring. Second, it focuses continuously using some sort of predictive algorithm. All the photographer has to do is to frame the subject and punch the button. Sounds good, if it works as advertised.

All I know is that the sniper-spotter team will be back to scan the skies above Oakwood with ADV Sports mode ready to go. I hope the eagle will be there for a rematch.

Cheers, Jock
 
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