The temperature was only -15F in Sax-Zim Bog this morning. Thus, I decided to take a walk at sunrise. I think the other birders who drove by me as I strolled down McDavitt Road may have thought I was crazy. Actually, when walking I can spot birds much more easily than from a moving car, but everyone thought it was a touch cool for a morning hike!

While I did not find anything on McDavitt, I did find (along with several other people) a new Snowy Owl which has appeared in the north part of the Bog. It’s a beauty! Here are two images I took not long after sunrise:

After some time with “Sleepy Snowy”, someone said there was a Great Gray Owl near by. I joined the exodous and by 8:30 was looking at my second owl of the morning (sunrise was 7:55 am).

Through the course of the day I kept returning to Snowy. I wondered if he might wake up and hunt. Nope. However, I did decide the owl presented the perfect opportunity to test the digital zoom on my new Canon SX70 camera. Said owl was way out in the field. From a strictly photography vantage point take a close look at the first image. I am using my the SX70 (released in early December) with digital zoom turned on. In the past with my Canon SX60 I never used digital zoom because the image quality really suffered.

With the SX70 on a bright day I have now found the results are pretty darn good … particularly if one considers the mobility I have with this camera. The optical zoom is 65x, and digital zoom doubles that reach to 130x (or 2730 mm which would be a HUGE lens). I did try taking some photos with digital zoom turned on when it was cloudy. Ugh. I did not like the results. I really needed the bright skies so I could shorten up the exposure. The “zoomed” image given above was taken at 1/1250th of a second at ISO 100.

While the SX60 had similar optics, the new camera has a new processor and operating system. Here is an image taken at the same time with digital zoom turned off.

Should you wish to see my other reviews of the Canon SX70, please follow this link.