Comments on: Our fifty outdoor pets

by: Mighty

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 16:24:29 +0100

One of the funniest things I ever saw was a flock of pigeons in Amsterdam at the edge of the town square. Someone had dropped a TV dinner on the ground and they had left the pudding uneaten. Obviously, very tasty to the birds.

Eventually I noticed something interesting. I could pick out the pecking order of the birds by the amount of pudding on the back of a bird's head :-)

by: Bastard Child

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 12:00:43 +0100

Dan your cocks put a smile on every man's face. Oh wait, that came out kind of gay...

>_>

by: arvidsem

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 11:05:47 +0100

FYI, your click through from your twitter account takes you through a bit.ly stopbadware.org page warning about unsolicited content before you get here.

by: Rob L

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 11:04:46 +0100

Grain fed Cockatoo MmmmmMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

For birds with bills that can have your finger off they can have peculiar habits. Ours would peel the skin off grapes, obviously didn't suit her refined palate.

by: reyalp

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 09:43:55 +0100

Regarding CHDK, there is no work on a DSLR version. The systems are too different to make it worthwhile to try to run the same code on both. However, there is an independent project that grew out of work on the CHDK forum: http://magiclantern.wikia.com/wiki/Magic_Lantern_Firmware_Wiki From what I understand this only supports the 5D mark II right now, but I haven't been following closely.

Some CHDK users have come up with very nice wildlife shots using motion detection: http://chdk.setepontos.com/index.php/topic,1038.30.html

by: skaar

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 07:01:11 +0100

funny of funny, at least to me, there was an instructable for laser triggered camera's that use chdk yesterday.

by: FuzzyPlushroom

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 06:59:28 +0100

Bit of high-density violence there at 3:10, eh? I laughed good and hard at that squawk.

by: RichVR

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 06:25:36 +0100

While watching the second video, my quaker parrot (who was happily grooming me) decided to fly to her cage and start eating. I guess the video made her hungry.

by: Foodgem

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 01:00:19 +0100

For DSLR, trap focus (catch in focus on my Pentax) works a treat for stuff like this. Of course you need a manual lens (or one that can be switched to manual focus) and I know how you Canon boys are scared of turning off the AF.

I used it very successfully at our last pocketbike race and turned the stills into a very quick timelapse - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XamB2WdPCG4

There was actually a lot of time in there where there were no bikes for the camera to shoot, but because it only takes a shot when something is in focus, it doesn't waste shots and you also get a huge number of keepers.

by: Popup

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 22:56:00 +0100

Have you ever played with CHDK? I know that you're a dedicated DSLR user, but surely you have a couple of old ixi (or what is the plural of ixus?) stashed away somewhere?

It's a 'firmware extension' that enables you to run small scripts, such as e.g. motion detection or time-lapse photography. I've used it to catch birds feeding at our tiny birdfeeder, but only for stills. We don't get anywhere near the same size or density of birds, but I wanted to see who gets there in the end, so I let it run for a couple of hours. (I'm not sure if you can do motion-detect films, but it wouldn't surprise me.)

It works on most compact digital Canons from this century. (It doesn't support my ancient 'digital ixus' from early 2000, but runs OK on both my 'ixus 400' and 'ixus 760is'.) Apparently there's some work on a DSLR version, but there hasn't been much advancement since I started following it a year ago (when I bought my first DSLR, an EOS-1000D).