The great blue heron peered around in the early morning light, swiveling his head like a periscope. He stalked slowly forward as he looked for fish to snatch out of the shallows. I liked his long-legged reflection in the water so I rotated the camera to include it in a vertical portrait. The heron had other plans and chose that moment for takeoff, but I was ready to capture him as water fountained off his feet and he circled lazily upward on huge wings.

Bird photography isn't something you do with a Kodak Instamatic, but it doesn't have to cost you your first-born child either. A new crop of small, lightweight digital cameras and long lenses can bring it within your reach. Before you buy your first camera you need to think about what you want to capture, and who's doing it. Always remember "It's about the behavior, genius!", and you'll end up with equipment that gives you the pictures you want.

Finding "something completely different…"
Watch a black phoebe do his out and back from a favorite reed before flying off to hunt somewhere else. Phoebes and other tyrant flycatchers never stay anywhere very long but follow small flies and other favorite foods. Approach slowly and quietly and they'll let you get within twenty feet. A red-tailed hawk may scan her territory and preen on a treetop for forty-five minutes before she stretches to the left, then to the right, defecates and beats her wings for liftoff. Both species hunt but differences in their size, favorite places and hunting styles determine cameras and lenses you use for each.

I stalk phoebes and other small birds with an EOS 20D small-sensor digital camera and 400mm f/4 DO IS lens. A 400mm f/5.6 lens works almost as well for much-reduced weight and cost, especially with a newer digital SLR that yields almost grainless high ISO images to compensate for the slower lens. Small-sensor cameras like the EOS 20D and Nikon's D70 use less than the lens' 35mm film field of view so they give the effect of a longer lens. The EOS 20D - 400mm combination works great for egrets hunting sushi in the shallows and hovering terns too.

If your quarry prefers to be in the next county only a huge lens will do. I usually follow red-tailed hawks, white-tailed kites, prairie falcons and osprey with a 500mm f/4L on a 1.4X teleconverter. This gives 700mm f/5.6… and I need all of it for these shy birds. Why can't you use a slower lens with a teleconverter? Let's explore that.

Teleconverters in one easy lesson (well, maybe two)
A 2X teleconverter on a 400mm lens gives you 800mm. It does this by making the image circle the lens projects on the sensor twice as large in area. Sensor size doesn't change so you get twice the image size or half the angle of view. The problem? The light energy spreads over twice the area, so the image is only a quarter as bright.

(ASIDE: We're talking about circles here - area is proportional to the circle's radius squared, and intensity is proportional to one divided by radius squared. The simple answer? You get an image twice as big, but 1/4 the brightness.)

So if you started with a 400mm f/4 lens, you end up with an 800mm f/8 lens. You'll have trouble manually focusing because the viewfinder image darkens too, and most cameras won't autofocus at lens apertures smaller than f/5.6. 2X teleconverters also degrade image quality enough to require near-perfect exposure and focusing for good photographs. They're not a good option unless you really can't get any closer without swimming there and the light's perfect.

A high quality 1.4X teleconverter may be a good choice with a 400mm f/4 lens. It enlarges the projected image circle's area by 1.4 times (roughly the square root of 2). This spreads that same light energy over 1.4 times the area so the image is half as bright - you get 560mm f/5.6. Autofocus still works on most cameras and the image brightness still lets you focus manually if you want. Canon or Nikon 1.4X teleconverters have high optical quality, so their image degradation is very minor.

Carrying it without your own sherpa or too many visits to the chiropractor
Until lensmakers figure out how to make lenses out of helium, we'll all be faced with this fact: long lenses are heavy. Canon's 400mm f/4 DO IS lens weighs a little over 4 pounds. Their 500mm f/4L IS lens doubles that to 8 ½ pounds. If you absolutely must have it, the 600mm f/4L IS lens really makes your shoulder sag at almost 12 pounds. And we're not even talking about the camera body and tripod you'll need. How do you carry all this stuff?

Kinesis Photo Gear to the rescue!
Kinesis Photo Gear's long lens cases aren't weightless, but they're light. They allow you to carry your huge lens and camera on your back with a waist belt applying most of the weight to your hips where it belongs. They have pockets for a few things like teleconverters and rain covers, but don't tempt you to pack the kitchen sink - they're just large enough for your longest lens on a camera and that's all. Kinesis' L511 fits a 500mm f/4 with 1.4X teleconverter mounted on a camera.

For something smaller like a camera on 300mm f/2.8 or 400mm f/4 lenses, Kinesis' E870 XX-large lens pouch is just about perfect - if you use their B107 or B108 waist belt. Everything fits with the lens hood reversed. Takes maybe half a minute to pull out the camera and mount the hood, then you're ready to shoot. www.kinesisgear.com has more specs and info.

Three legged Monster
I haven't said anything about the tripod. Contrary to popular belief, you need one. Yes, I sometimes hand hold bird flight shots. No, they won't be the sharpest images I get, even with the lens' image stabilization (IS, or VR if you're a Nikon fan) helping. And just try handholding that boat-anchor 500mm lens and camera for a few seconds…

So I use Gitzo's 1325 carbon fiber tripod. It's sturdy enough for a 500mm f/4 lens on a heavy EOS 1D mark II camera, has no wobbly center post and extends the camera to eye height. It also lets you lock the legs at lower angles for natural perspectives of ducks eating shellfish as big as their heads while they swim past. Carbon fiber weighs about 2/3 what aluminum does, but it costs around 20% more.

You can't bolt the camera directly to the tripod. You need a tripod head between them. Heads come in three flavors: pan/tilt (the kind with separate adjustment levers for X- and Y-axis movements), ball, and gimbal. The levers on pan/tilt heads get in the way and don't adjust fast enough when I want to track flying birds or charging bison (hopefully not chasing me). Ball heads are better but fatiguing to your arms when you're following wildlife all afternoon. Gimbal heads allow effortless movement of long lenses. Balance the camera/lens on the head and you can move them with a fingertip.

Wimberley makes the most rigid gimbal heads. I've tried other makers' lightweight gimbal heads, and they vibrate too much for sharp images at the slower shutter speeds I can end up using. A Wimberley Sidekick in an Arca-Swiss B1 ballhead weighs slightly over 3 pounds and holds either 500mm or 400mm lens and camera very steady. If you use a 600mm lens you'll need Wimberley's original all-in-one gimbal head which weighs close to 4 pounds by itself without the tripod. Go to www.tripodhead.com for more information.

You can strap the tripod to the side of the long lens case but it unbalances the load and does bad things to your back. So I carry the collapsed tripod in my hand and the camera gear nicely balanced on my back and hips. I try to set up only when I get to where the birds are, but my chiropractor scolds me (gently) when I've been carrying camera and lens on the tripod over my shoulder. You may miss occasional grab shots of that red-shouldered hawk preening with its mate 30 feet away, but your back will thank you in the long run.

After ducks and grebes finished their performance at Shoreline Lake one morning, I walked over to San Francisco Bay with a tripod-mounted camera and 500mm f/4 lens over my shoulder. The herons and egrets weren't around, so I hiked up the embankment to watch an Anna's hummingbird checking out some brightly colored shrubbery. But the hummer flew away and I thought the show was over. Then I noticed a robin consuming bright red berries nearby. He'd bend down and grab one, quickly looking back up to check on predators before tilting his head back and swallowing. Here he is.

It definitely pays to keep looking for images even when your first subject flies away!

Or order a mounted 8X10 print of any image by April 15 and get a 20% discount. Just type "20% discount" in the 'Comments' section of the order form. After clicking the order form link, scroll down the page that appears to choose your free or discounted print and place your order.