My wife and I went eagle-watching over the weekend, where we spotted 26 eagles over the course of about eight hours (this was near Concrete, Marblemount, and Rockport, WA). I don’t have a great zoom on my camera, so I improvised by placing a pair of binoculars in front of the lens. Although the camcorder was locked down using a tripod, I had to hold the binoculars by hand, making it extremely difficult to center the bird in view. So, we ended up with some really shaky footage of some eagles.
Today I thought I’d try throwing it at image stabilization software, in this case Slick Stabilizer, part of GeeThree’s Slick 8 package. I was surprised at the results, given that (a) the footage is really shaky, (b) the lighting isn’t good due to the added lens, and (c) there’s a lot of detail – branches, etc. – in the footage that could potentially confuse the software. You can view the results here: Eagle Stabilize Test.
Jeff Carlson | Never Enough Coffee Creations 