Wildlife Photography with a GoPro HD

I thought I’d try to use my GoPro HD video camera to do some wildlife photography. So, I set it to timelapse mode where it will take a still photo using its 5 Megapixel camera every 30 seconds. I then attached it to the pergola, pretty close to the bird feeder. Topped up the bird feeder and left it to do its thing.

It took a while for the birds to get used to it, but they soon came. The fact that it has such a wide angle lens means that it has to be positioned really close to get good shots of the birds. However, it does mean that it has a huge depth of field so the shots should all be nicely in focus. It is also completely silent in operation so once the birds were used to it, it wouldn’t scare them off each time it took a photo.

Of course, the fact that it only takes a photo every 30 seconds means that there is a fair amount of luck involved in getting a good shot, but its waterproof case means that I can just leave it out there doing its thing so it isn’t exactly a labour intensive photo shoot. Mind you, with 100’s of photos to sift through afterwards, there could be a fair bit of image processing to do.

This mornings attempts weren’t great as I had the camera facing the sun, but I shall make a few tweaks and try again. I’m not sure if the camera will be quite up to the task as the photos may not be quite as sharp as I’d like, but it’s worth a try and it’s certainly better than strapping my expensive DSLR camera to the pergola!

Here are a few from my first attempt.

Tags: BirdsNaturePhotography