White-faced Heron does breakfast
 

An Australian White-faced Heron does breakfast at the mouth of Pipers Creek, Duvauchelle, Akaroa Harbour, New Zealand, where it flows into the Pacific Ocean. I’m not sure but looks like live herring or something similar on the menu. The spring tide is almost full and this is prime hunting ground for the Heron right now as several species of small fish, including the ever-so-tasty whitebait, head up the creek at this time followed by slightly bigger fish that feed on the smaller fist, and so it goes. The Heron had a good breakfast.

At the end of the clip, which by the way is right off the Sony HX200v camera set to full auto with no post-modification whatsoever, I zoomed out in order to contextualize things and you get the big picture. We are looking at 30x zoom and an extremely efficient image stabilization system. This was shot hand-held and a younger stronger body than mine would no doubt do a better job of keeping the camera steady.

Whatever, not bad for a $400.00US camera, I reckon. Please feel free to download the original clip to evaluate and fool around with as you wish. AVCHD 60p 1920 x 1080 total bitrate 26540kbps.

Cheers...

Re: White-faced Heron does breakfast
 

Hi John,
Yes that is some efficient stabilization! What does the original clip look like on a big screen. It's hard for me to judge looking at it on Vimeo on my laptop. I do find that the picture tends to soften a bit with most camera's using in camera stabilization. I am building a cable cam at the moment, & desperatly trying to get things smooth enough that i can shoot without the steadyshot on.
Thanks for posting.
Bryce

Re: White-faced Heron does breakfast
 

Thanks Bryce, and as yet I have not viewed the clip on the big screen, only on my 24” editing monitor. I have uploaded three screen captures that show macro-blocking and a somewhat un-sharp image but given that this is at the far end of the zoom on this small sensor el cheapo camera I’m not surprised nor dismayed. The clip is a tad overexposed I reckon which does not help but the stabilization is indeed remarkably efficient and I don’t know what impact it is having on the image quality. I suspect not a lot and that the limiting factors are the small sensor, the lens and the codec. But I’m not sure. I do suspect that to make a significant improvement in image quality I would need to come up with a significant amount of money.

I have a Kenyon Labs K8 but it is hardly a walk-around device. The new Kenyon Labs 4x4 gyro looks interesting and may be helpful in your situation.

Cheers...

Re: White-faced Heron does breakfast
 

I think that any loss from stabilization that is mostly optical on Sony camcorders is minimal. And the tele-extender mode, which makes use of sensor cropping, does an effective job. Here are two frame grabs of herons on a fishing expedition taken at 500mm (35mm-equivalent) using sensor-cropping from a 108060p AVCHD video.