Lutong Beach again this morning

The other end of Lutong Beach on 400mm, uncropped.

Well, I went back to Lutong Beach this morning, this time armed with an EF400/5.6, Canon7D and a tripod with an Arca-Swiss B1 head. I figure I don't need the Wimberley this time around.

The waders were no longer at their expected roost, the tide much lower than yesterday. Perhaps the waders have flown to better pickings at Kuala Baram Lagoon, slightly more muddy there. Only the Chinese Egret was present, lurking at the water's edge. And it was an obliging subject, too pre-occupied with getting breakfast that it paid scant attention to the 5 legged creature on the beach.

I took pictures of my date as per usual, the subject seemed familiar with the routine. And the light this morning wasn't at all too bad, slightly less overcast than yesterday but not too harsh to create severe problems with metering.

It has to be said that it's a lot less fiddly to shoot with SLR+telelens as opposed to a combo of SLR+normal lens+telescope. You do loose significant reach of the telescope set-up (400mm vs 1700mm) but you gain the agility of a fix lens operation on an SLR.

Great magnifications come with great issues with regards to stability. Every little motion made will be exaggerated many times ... you can't afford to be shaky with a telescope set-up. A ball head and sturdy tripod however are sufficient to manage shake issues with the SLR+telelens set-up.

Another obvious advantage of the digiscope set-up is you get to make your observations, shots, recording further away from the subject well away from the subject's circle of fear. Of course if you are Photographer Dewa Tahap 9, you can do exactly the same within the circle with a point and shoot on a 35mm lens.

Flight shots are way easier to capture with SLR+telelens set-up. Though my panning still sucks big time, this morning I managed a couple of reasonably good record shots of a Peregrine Falcon. The small raptor was poised to mob the Chinese Egret but decided to halt it's pre-meditated sudden kamikaze move mid-air and turned tail in the opposite direction.

The first time I noticed Peregrine Falcon in the Lutong area was sometime back in July-August when two birds were observed squeaking at the top of Shell telecommunications tower not too far away. They're more regularly sighted further north closer to Kuala Baram area.

Here are a few images for comparison, obviously these are not ot "apple-to-apple" comparisons but close enough to practically assess which set-up is more suited to which situation. It is mostly common sense really, which perhaps every birder-photographer-digiscoper-amateur naturalist already knows, I just needed to run through the exercise myself.


Chinese Egret in the early morning light at Lutong Beach.


Chinese Egret on it's determined gait to hunt for breakfast, slim pickings today all the big ones got away. This image from SLR+400mm Telelens, cropped 45% to get similar sized image as below.


Chinese Egret as captured from the SLR+50mm lens+APO77 Telescope, cropped 20%.


The gutsy Peregrine Falcon assessing the situation after a fruitless first dive. Getting flight shots with the SLR+normal lens+telescope set-up is next to impossible especially unplanned shots, unless of course you are a Digiscoper Dewa Tahap 7.


On more than once I noticed both Chinese Egret and Little Egret rushing up to shore from the shallows where they were busy hunting to walk up the beach for 10-15feet on dry sand, pooped and walked back to the shallows to resume hunting. Perhaps they don't find it wise to get the water all murkied up.