Generally, when you see digiscoped pics of birds (images captured with a Point and Shoot or one of the new Mirrorless Reflexes, or even a true DSLR, behind the eyepiece of a spotting scope) they impress because they are frame-filling shots of birds…or extreme close-ups of heads of larger birds like herons or egrets. The thing about digiscoping is that it gets you, with relative ease, close…very close. Those who practice conventional long-lens photography with a DSLR have to work a lot harder to fill the frame.

For this shot, digiscoped with a Point and Shoot, I made no attempt to fill the frame. This is an environmental shot showing the bird in habitat, attractive to me because of the posture of the bird…the phoebeality of the portrait. This image also shows that you do not have to fill the frame to get feather detail with a scope. If you click the image and look at it in the larger sizes on my Wide Eyed In Wonder smugmug site (controls are at the top of the window), you will see that there is a lot of detail beyond what a normal view can show.

A few moments later, the bird flew in closer and perched in the shadows of a pine.

This is a much more typical digiscoped shot, and it has a lot of pheobeality too…but the main impression depends on image scale. This is close. The bird as you see on your monitor is at least 3/4s life size, and if you look lager sizes you can see it considerably larger than life.

Nikon Coolpix P300, 15-56x Vario eyepiece and ZEISS DiaScope 65FL. 1) approximately 1150mm equivalent field of view, 1/320th @ ISO 160. f4.7 limited by the camera. 2) about 2000mm equivalent, 1/125th @ ISO 220. f5.5, limited by the scope. Program in both cases.

Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.