Using two cameras for one task

This afternoon I was taking photographs of a rather wierd insect walking on my veranda floor when the finches flew in to keep me company. They seem to be attracted by my presence outside, when we pack everything away after having a cup of coffee and move indoors, they fly away and back into the trees.

I switched my attention to the birds and decided to give the SLR a go in video mode. Boy, was that difficult! Because of the less than ordinary light in the shade from the veranda roof, the depth of field was really narrow, so only part of a bird would be in focus while the other birds behind it were very much out of focus. These birds are quite timid so moving closer and "going wide" was out of the question, as it was I was only three metres away from them but wanted the camera to be close enough to capture their markings.

I must have taken about five minutes of video before I stopped and went inside to find Steven's Sony hard drive camcorder. I know from past attempts at using it that the quality is not brilliant but when all video on Youtube is converted to flash video anyway (and 30fps when we shoot in PAL 25fps here in Australia) I wondered whether there would be very much difference in the converted quality.

Now I am able to view the video I CAN see a difference - particularly noticeable with the zoomed in shot of the pigeons on the tree branch. That was using the digital zoom so quality drop is not really surprising! When it comes to comparing the early shots of the double bar finches and the shots in the second half of the video the difference is not really so great. Interesting!
To view this video on Youtube click to this link
AJ