Shorter Version
A little more drama in the extended cut!
Red morph and grey owlets - two obviously distinct personalities!
These HD videos were taken on May 8th before dusk at the full zoom 840mm setting. If you try and get too close to the nest box they get nervous and retreat or act unnatural - at a reasonable distance they find you fascinating to observe - always an ego boost, and act more natural. This requires zoom power. The area in the video is roughly 6 inches by 8 inches - in the original 1920x1080 it looks amazing on a large HD TV. This video is reduced in size for uploading to the web. However, you must use a solid tripod to get these kind of results. I'm impressed with the low-light capability of this camera and the sound quality from two microphones on the front to provide stereo audio. The bird calling in the distance is very clear. My point and shoot Cannon SX230HS that most of the photos and video documentation was taken with is almost as good, but the zoom only goes to 14X, or about 400mm. Cannon has just come out with the SX260HS with 20x zoom capability at about the same price point.
Many people complain that the pictures taken with these super-zoom cameras are not as clear as expected - the reality is that no amount of image stabilization or auto-focusing is going to completely overcome handshake and hunting for a subject at high zoom levels. More on amateur photo/video in your backyard in future blogs.