Lytro: The future of bird photography?

Lytro has a new type of camera called a light field camera. The major advance is that it captures more information with each photo so that you can refocus the photos AFTER you take them. In the photos above, click on the closer blue jay, the farther one, and the railing to see the effects of refocusing.

While I post some fairly nice photos at times, I take many more blurry photos that I don't show anyone. Refocusing later gets around this problem.

Now, the camera isn't perfect. It only has a 8x zoom, which is too little for most bird photography. The resolution isn't very good. When saved as a jpg (rather than live image as above), they are only about 1000x1000 pixels which isn't ideal for printing enlargements. I'm sure future versions will get around these limitations, but Mike will continue to play with his new toy.

Common Merganser fishing on Lake Nelson

We'll stop posting merganser photos when they migrate north

Common Mergansers swimming right to left with male in front. Hooded Mergansers swimming left to right with male in front.

A Ducky Day

 

Pied-billed Grebe

 

Green-winged teal

 

Hooded Mergansers

 

Common Mergansers

We've been lucky to have a few more fancy ducks this year. The teal only stayed for a few minutes, but the grebe, and hooded mergansers have been here a while. The common mergansers are less common here, but we've seen them a few days.

Grackle and Squirrel

 

The grackles have come to town.  Another nuisance - or so we at first thought!  Chris was driving them off and looking online for inventive ways to get rid of them when she discovered maybe it's not so bad to let them hang around.  They are only here for a few weeks, and they eat bugs!  If they're willing to eat the awful centipedes that sometimes wind up in the house, we're all for letting them stay!  Now, whatever is going on with the head of this one we don't know.  They usually have a beautiful shiny blue head, but this one either has some albino traits or a bad case of alopecia or mange or molting or something.  We're willing to let them hang around but not all that interested to spend more time figuring out the odd looks of this one. 

 

There's a new philosphy around here; if you cant beat them, join them.  Even though it's been a very tame winter this year, there were a few very cold days when the squirrels looked miserable and hungry. They continued to raid the bird feeders, driving Chris crazy, so she broke down and bought them their own corn cob treats.  They ate through those pretty quickly and seemed most appreciative.  Since they are sort of comical and fun to watch when they're not invading the birds' territory, Chris decided to put out some over ripe strawberries to see if they would like those.  Seems it's best to keep the little critters occupied with treats which keeps us all happy.