Digibinning the National Zoo! - 21 Jul 2016

I'm accompanying Robin for a few days here in Washington, DC while she attends a Futuring Workshop for work. While she's in class, I've been checking out the local attractions. The National Zoo is only 1.1 miles away from our hotel, so I took a walk to the zoo and spent the day checking out the exhibits. I didn't bring any of the camera or digiscoping equipment, but instead just brought a pair of Kowa 8x33 binoculars and my Sony a6300 camera. With only the Sigma 30mm f/2.8 on the camera I had no telephoto capabilities, but used the binoculars as my lens. Without an adapter I was forced to handhold the camera and binoculars to photograph the locals, but had pretty good luck! Here's my digibinned photo-essay.

Image quality was not bad, but there was a significant blue-shift in all images that had to be corrected. Chromatic aberration was also a problem, but that was probably due to less than perfect optics from the binoculars. Still, I had a ball taking photographs of the local birds and captive animals. An Acadian Flycatcher was the best countable bird of the day.