Taking pictures with a video camera... 
by Stéphane Moniotte
A digital video camera might appear as the best choice for birdwatchers because you can film birds and take pictures.By filming you also can receive more information when a bird would open its wings or turns its head for just a second; you can follow much more easily flying birds, and -of course- you see the bird behaviour, together with a sound recording. 
Pictures captured from a movie, however, are of poorer quality (0.8 to 1.1 Mpixels) than with a digital camera like the Coolpix 990/995 (3.3 Mpixels) and are always regarded as useless for printing purposes.

I recently started to make a few tests ...

My camera is a Canon XL-1,  the World's first interchangeable lens Mini DV camcorder. Click here to see its technical characteristics. 

The gallery below shows you some recent pictures extracted from a three hours movie taken in Iceland in June 2001, as well as a few shots of a male Boreal Owl (Aegolius funereus) observed in extreme conditions during a rainy night here in Belgium. Click on the thumbnails to enlarge the pictures.

           

        

    

    

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