296 
Camera Craft. 
t The Emu 
April 
A Method of Obtaining Series of Bird 
Pictures 
By P. A. GILBERT, R.A.O.U. Sydney. 
Bird photography, apart from the insight it gives into the 
home life of our wild birds, affords an opportunity of obtaining 
pictures of general interest and scientific value. A little special 
knowledge, however, is requisite to achieve the best results. Lit¬ 
erature on bird photography is plentiful, but it is doubtful 
whether the books published help to any great extent to put the 
beginner on the right track for obtaining uniform pictures, or 
supplying the information most needed. Further, no particu¬ 
lar scheme of bird photography seems to have been introduced 
that aims at procuring standard series of pictures of our wild 
birds. The present tendency is to photograph the bird in profile 
alone. As many of our birds once common, are becoming rare, 
an effort should be made to record their home life before the 
present favourable conditions vanish. 
The following hints attempt to impart a method that allows 
variability in artistic setting, besides obtaining ornithological 
records in series. In other words, they outline a procedure that 
enables the student to secure uniformity and photographic accur¬ 
acy in making pictorial series of birds in various postures. This 
working method has also been contrived to lift bird photography 
a little beyond the mere placing of the camera down at random 
and chancing results. 
It is an advantage if the bird photographer possesses a camera 
with fairly long bellows extension, so as to allow free focussing, 
and the near approach to the subject. A six-inch anastigrnatic 
lens will be taken as a basis, and four factors must be taken into 
consideration before we commence. First a scale on the bed of 
the camera must be provided for, which will indicate distances 
from the lens to the subject. Next, the depth of field must be 
ascertained which corresponds with the particular distance indi¬ 
cated on the scale. Then, the length of the bird to be photo¬ 
graphed, and last, the size of the image on the plate when the 
indicator of the scale is set to a certain point. 
How to Set the Scale .—Focus on an object two feet away, 
then mark the bed of the camera to correspond. Use some part 
of the camera as an indicator, so that, when you rack to this 
mark out in the bush, you will know that the lens is two feet 
away from the bird. Now focus on the same object five feet 
away, and again mark the bed of the camera to agree with this 
distance. With a six-inch anastigmatic lens the bellows exten¬ 
sion between these two marks will be about one and a half 
inches. Divide this into eighths of an inch. If it is deemed un¬ 
desirable to mark the camera, the scale can be worked out on 
a piece of paper and then pasted on the bed, and may be washed 
off if so desired. The eighth-inch points can be marked alpha- 
