{"id":139571,"date":"2023-07-18T06:10:50","date_gmt":"2023-07-18T12:10:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=139571"},"modified":"2023-07-18T11:55:53","modified_gmt":"2023-07-18T17:55:53","slug":"my-new-homemade-bird-photography-gadget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2023\/07\/18\/my-new-homemade-bird-photography-gadget\/","title":{"rendered":"My New Homemade Bird Photography Gadget"},"content":{"rendered":"

This old dog has a new trick.<\/p>\n

One of the biggest and most consistent frustrations I have with bird photography is finding birds on the “wrong side” (the passenger side) of my pickup. There’s a console between me and the passenger seat so I can’t scooch over to shoot out that window and I often either can’t or shouldn’t turn my pickup around because of one-way roads, extremely narrow roads, no roads or traffic. Besides, birds have a nasty habit of not waiting for “turnarounds”.<\/p>\n

And my lens\/camera\/teleconverter combination weighs nearly 11 pounds so if I stopped, got out and walked around my pickup, it’s too large and heavy for me to handhold and get acceptable results. So typically, when I find birds on that side of my pickup, I just have to ignore them and drive on by, which makes me bonkers.<\/p>\n

But recently, after more than 14 years of photographing birds, I finally realized that I had the beginnings of a solution to my problem built right into my pickup.<\/p>\n

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It’s called a stake pocket. Most (all?) pickups have them and I have four of them, one near each of the four corners of my pickup bed rails. My stake pockets have covers but…<\/p>\n

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the covers are easily removed.<\/p>\n

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So here’s my homemade solution, sitting on my table saw extension. Most accurately it should be called a “stake pocket lens support” but for now I’m simply calling it my gadget (probably a result of all the recent publicity surrounding Robert Oppenheimer and his “gadget”.)<\/p>\n

It consists of a horizontal bar made of 3 parts – a wood dowel that’s 28″ long and 1″ in diameter, a supporting wood block that the dowel is glued into and a ‘lens stop’ glued and screwed to the other end of the dowel. The other component of my gadget is the vertical stem that fits into any of the four stake pockets on my pickup. The vertical stem has a short 3\/4″ diameter oak dowel that fits into a hole drilled into the bottom of the wood block.<\/p>\n

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Here’s the entire gadget assembled on my table saw. The hole at the bottom of the vertical stem is superfluous and not a problem.<\/p>\n

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In this photo the vertical stem is installed into the right rear stake pocket of my pickup, where it fits tightly and very securely. The vertical stem will probably be mounted here semi-permanently. When I’m not photographing birds, I’ll just keep the horizontal bar in the cab of my pickup.<\/p>\n

When I arrive at a birding location I’ll…<\/p>\n

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mount the horizontal bar to the vertical stem and leave it there all morning, so it’s readily available when I need it. The horizontal bar, the actual lens rest, freely rotates 360\u00b0 (a little bee’s wax rubbed onto the short oak dowel ensures that it rotates freely) but I’ll only need about a third of that amount of rotation.<\/p>\n

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It’s at just the right height for me to use as a lens rest and its rotation allows me to shoot at a variety of angles. I actually have more freedom that way than I would if I was shooting out my window from inside my pickup.<\/p>\n

Note: In this photo I’m actually using the prototype I built of the gadget. In that version the dowel of the horizontal bar was only 3\/4″ in diameter, which had a little too much flex in it. In the final version, that dowel is 1″ in diameter which solved the problem.<\/em><\/p>\n

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So far I’ve only used the gadget in the field on one morning but on that morning it allowed me to get many photos I’d have been unable to get otherwise – including the photo of the American Avocet chick<\/a><\/span><\/span> I posted two days ago.<\/p>\n

I may not need the gadget every day but on those occasions when I do, I really, really need it. It’s that, or just drive right on by.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This old dog has a new trick. (7 photos)<\/p>\n

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