The New Camera Yahoo's

The first photo I took with my new camera.

We spent last week at Lakeside, Ohio, giving talks for their summer Chautauqua. This thoughtful man brought something nice along with him, as Father Time decreed that I would trudge a little farther into my fifth decade on July 24.

That somethin'-somethin' was a new camera for me. You see, when we visited Yellowstone National Park back in June, I left the park a little souvenir: My Canon Digital Rebel XTi, the faithful workhorse that has been delighting you all for the last four years. We were watching a peregrine and her chicks on a distant cliff, and there were bighorns nursing their lambies, and an Audubon's warbler close by, and I got excited and started pulling out optics and scopes and digiscoping stuff and in the kerfuffle I left my poor Rebel with its wonderful wide-angle lens on a low stone wall. And though we realized it right away and raced back 20 minutes later, that was enough leeway for somebody to steal it. What...a...fleepin'....bummer. Yeah, I reported it immediately at a nearby ranger station, and I reported it to Xanterra, the concessionaire at Yellowstone, but nobody ever turned it in. They took it home instead. Sure hope they liked my larkspur photos, the rat finks. I mean, what kind of creep could download photos of my kids and a bunch of wildflowers and bison and not want to return the camera to its mom? I just can't think about that.

Luckily I still had my newer Canon Digital Rebel XSi with the 70-300 mm. image-stabilized telephoto lens, so we finished out the trip shooting like mad as usual. But oh, I missed having two cameras, one for landscape and one for wildlife. I felt naked without having a camera on each shoulder.

Fortuitously, at that very spot, a semi-pro photographer had excitedly shown us his Canon Powershot G-11, the Cadillac of point-and-shoot cameras. He told us that every National Geographic photographer carries one; every pro working the Olympics has one. They use it for crowd shots, grab shots, everything. It has 10 mpxl with RAW capability; is crazy fast and sharp, and it's a delightful little chunk of metal in your hands. It was clear this guy with his big howitzer lenses was nuts about his little point-and-shoot.

So that's what Bill gave me for my birthday last week, a Canon G-11. And I started hitting that shutter button and every time I put it down Phoebe grabbed it, so we'll take you on the test drive together.

Wide angle. Everything's in focus. Chetty's watching for passing doggehs he can snorf at.

I missed my garden so much I brought it with me. Oh, look. Gladiolus bits.

Oh, and look. Grains of zinnia pollen.

See, I've never had macro capability, much less a camera that figures out when I need macro capability and automatically switches to it. I had the lens practically touching the flower for these shots.

The whole bouquet. Nothing dresses up a sunporch like homegrown glads. There's Chetty's leash, too. Whenever anyone said "walk," he'd dance out and grab it off the table and put it on the offender's knee. Oh, I love a talking dog.

The Canon G-11 has crazy MonkeyCam capability. You can swivel the big, bright LED screen so it faces BACKERDS, and you can point the camera right at yourselfs and see what you're shooting and get fabulous, hugely flattering pictures like this.

Oh, look. Phoebe's contact lens. She took dozens of dreamy self-portraits, as a newly minted teenager will. She turned the LED viewfinder around, stuck the camera in her eye and took a photo. I think she has 16 eyelash mites.


Mether. Take a picture of me, Chet Baker. Here, I will pose for it. And then let's go for another walk. I like walking on the lead here at Lakeside. It makes me feel important, and many nice older people stop and ask if I am one of those Boston Bulls. I like being called a Boston Bull.

I see you are still playing with your new toy. I will give you one more pose. But I hope that you know we could take much more interesting photos outside, if we went for a walk. A WALK. I am sending you a mental picture of us taking a WALK.

I think that if I concentrate hard enough, you will take me for a WALK. Hmm hmm hmm hmm. Walk, walk, walk, walk, walk. Picture of me and you going for a walk. Hm hm.

All right, Chetty. We'll take you and the Canon G-11 for a WALK. Until Thursday, arribaderchy. And happy birthday to me! Thanks, babe. Bitchin' birfday present.

Astute readers (and that means all of you) will notice that there are hotlinks to these products right in the text. Hit a blue link, and it will take you to B&H Photo's product description page for that camera or lens. Decide that you want to buy it right then and there, or come back later and buy it by clicking on my link, and I get a little bitty kickback from B&H. It won't cost you a cent more; in fact, I've done all the research for you and found the fabulous cameras and lenses and the lowest price and best service around. It'll just help buy Baby some shoes.

Tarrales Regulars

Many of the more cooperative birds in Guatemala were Neotropical migrants, like this least flycatcher. Well, they were cooperative about having their photos taken, but none of them would call for us, so we were left with trusting our instincts and the range maps in the field guide as to their identities. The tapered, elliptical eyering and overall grayness of this little Empid pointed to least flycatcher for me.

In blogging about Guatemalan birds, remember that I'm limited to writing about the ones for which I got decent pictures. They tend to be the commoner, easier to see birds. No matter: they're fabulous enough for nature-starved folks like you and me. Because I always had the blog in mind, getting pictures of even a fraction of the birds we were spotting became a neurotic quest for me. I came back with gobs of pictures that are no good at all, a few that are at least identifiable, and a tiny handful that are worth looking at twice. The white-winged tanager here is a good example. You can tell what it is, but even with sharpening and cropping, it doesn't come close to doing a terrific little bird justice. Overall, they're snapshots, just me trying to bring you something to look at, struggling against the nocturnal shadows and blinding sun of the tropical forest. In this modest quest, I felt well-matched to my camera rig, which is a Canon Digital Rebel XTi with 70-300 mm. zoom lens. It's fairly light and easy to carry, and ready to be swung up at a second's notice. I've developed a rudimentary understanding of what I have to do in difficult light conditions (and they all seem to be difficult in deep tropical forest). Picture me madly spinning dials, opening up f-stops and speeding up ISO. It's cool to get at least some souvenir of a memorable sighting. So let the parade of mediocre bird pictures begin!

Chachalacas make more of an aural impression on the landscape than a visual one. Drab brown, with a white vent (this is the white-bellied chachalaca, a nice regional endemic that lots of birders like to tick off their lists in Guatemala), the white-bellied chacha cuts the air with its grating chorus of cha-cha LAC! cha-cha-LAC!, given in groups of five to ten. It's very loud, a classic sound of the tropics. Chachas, as we liked to call them, are related to guans and currasows, and are generally quickly hunted out unless protected, as they are at Los Tarrales.An unfortunate shot, with the branch obscuring his nice red wattle. Oh well, you take what you get, and not all of it is National Geographic caliber. It's a chachalaca. The dark band on the breast is a branch shadow. Here, a chacha sings out the day as the tropical night falls like a cloth. He's the tiny fleck in the left center of the picture.One of the cutest little characters of mid-level tropical forest is the common tody-flycatcher. An Andy Gump chin, long, flat bill, staring white eye and gnatcatcher-like tail characterize him. The best thing he did I couldn't capture in a picture. When it's excited, the common tody-flycatcher raises its long thin tail up over its back and slowly swivels it in a circle, like he's waiting for a pitch. I found myself chanting, "Hey, batter batter Hey batter!" and talking to him as if he were a pet parakeet. He didn't seem to mind. The whole affair is maybe 4" long. Tiny, cute Todirostrum cinereum, we could use some of you up here in the Ohio woods.

Perhaps the most striking bird to inhabit Los Tarrales is the white-throated magpie jay, Calocitta formosa. Those of you who've done a bit of global birding know that any bird with "magpie" in its name is going to be well-endowed in the gee-whiz department. White-throated magpie jays do not disappoint. I will never forget the first time I laid eyes on one, in the Guanacaste province of Costa Rica. Lee-ord. It was like a giant blue jay that had gotten into the dress-up trunk in the attic. What's that they say about a picture being worth...This creature is loud, raucous, tame and inquisitive. It is also 18" long. It's about what you'd get if you scaled a blue jay up by 200% and gave him a good stiff mojito to remove his inhibitions.
Gotta love the hairdo. Just a little fillip to add to his general impressiveness. In flight, they're unmistakable, always breathtaking.Imagine living in a place where such sights are commonplace; not even giving an 18" long crazy beautiful magpie jay a second glance. We all take for granted that which is common. The jays seemed to enjoy being gasped at by the greenhorns draped in optics.

As I write, the first fox sparrow of spring is feeding on the greening lawn. And the woodcocks sang and danced last evening. Bill raced home to catch the end of their act, and we grilled lamb and asparagus in a welcome-spring, welcome-home celebration.