External Wildlife Photography from my basement

A post by: Paul BurwellPPA few weeks ago it was-30 Celsius (-22 Fahrenheit) and I was intent on shooting a couple of red-back Voles that seem to have settled in the backyard of my house in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Before I got myself a new gadget, I probably would have suited up in my heavy Canada Goose parka, some long underwear, snow pants and about four hand warmers and camped for a morning to a few shots of these cute little guys./PPBut now I’m a little older and maybe even a little wiser and I so love my technology. And one of those technological gadgets can I get shots without having to worry about one of my favorite appendices freezing right off. What is the gadget that I’m talking about? It’s called the CamRanger and it allows me to operate my camera everywhere I within WiFi range (~ 35 m indoors and outdoors ~ 100 m)./PPIMG class=”aligncenter size-large wp-image-65969″ alt=”CamRanger_Setup” src=”http://www.photo-natural.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/wpid-CamRangerSetup-600×360.png” width=”600″ height=”360″The CamRanger itself is a small white plastic box measuring about 3.5 “x 2” that you on the USB port of your camera via a USB cable. The unit itself is powered by a lithium-ion rechargeable battery. Once the CamRanger is connected to your camera set up a private WiFi network. A device connecting to that WiFi network (such as iPhone, iPad, Android device, Mac or Windows machine), you can wirelessly control your camera from that device./PPIn my case I used my iPad connect to the CamRanger connected to my camera. I put the camera on a tripod with the lens pointing at the holes in the side of a snow bank that the voles were used for access to the world outside their burrow. Once set up, I could in my own cave which in this case my home office in our basement was scurry./PPI the Live View function to keep an eye on what the camera saw activated. I was been watching these voles for a few days (they set up camp under one of our bird feeders) and I knew that she came out for about one a.m. just after sunrise. Sure enough, not long after getting everything set up and waiting for my glasses to thaw, the voles started making their appearance./PPFrom my position I could consult warmly tucked away in the basement on the live histogram and adjustments to the exposure (shutter speed, Aperture and ISO) to make sure my exposure was perfect. I turned on a feature in the software app called “Focus peak” that allowed me to clearly see what was, and was in focus and I refined that focus via controls in the app./PPWith that set everything, it was just a matter of waiting for the voles to itself in a photogenic position and then I would tap on the remote shutter button on the CamRanger app and take a shot. Usually the voles spend their time gently then ran out from their lair, emerging to find a seed or other, and quickly return to the shelter of their tunnel entrance safe eating the seed. If they got a particularly good seed, they would retreat further in the tunnel, presumably to the stash away./PIMG class=”size-full wp-image-65970″ alt=”Northern Red-backed Vole –