Choice - Nikon 4500 or secondhand 990

[Peter Cox]

I AM INVESTIGATING EQUIPMENT TO ENABLE ME TO DIGISCOPE AS MY CURRENT SCOPE (NIKON SPOTTING SCOPE) AND CAMERA ARE NOT SUITABLE FOR THIS PURPOSE. I HAVE BEN SEARCHING THE WEB FOR FOR INFORMATION AND HAVE DECIDED UPON THE SWAROVSKI AT80HD (SECONDHAND) BUT AM STILL UNSURE ABOUT CAMERA. I INITIALLY DECIDED UPON THE NIKON4500BUT HAVE BEEN WONDERING IF THIS IS THE RIGHT CHOICE AS LAURENCE POH'sEXPERIMENTS REVEALS THAT THE 990 GAVE SHARPER IMAGE. IAM ALSO IMPRESSED BY ANN COOK's PHOTOGRAPHS OF BIRDS OF MANITOBA WHICH WERE ALSO TAKEN WITH A 990. CAN ANYONE ADVISE ME ON THIS DILEMMA.

[Andy Bright]

Good question.
I have both (990 since release and 4500 since late May last year) and still swap between the two.
My own conclusion, and I did disagree with Laurence last summer (I think there are some duff 995's and 4500's about), is that the cp4500 can take higher quality digiscoped images than the cp990 (notably if you stick to a max camera zoom of 3x or so). Some of the percieved 'sharpness' from the cp990's images is down to noise in the image, the cp4500 is far quieter and often gives the impression of softer images.

Having said that, I do believe that the results from the cp990 are slighlty more consistant and it's certainly an easier camera to start digiscoping with ... the larger and less cluttered monitor of the cp990 helps in this.

Another aspect worth noting for British digiscopers is the quality that the cp4500 gives on iso200 setting (doubling shutter-speed from the standard iso100).... results from the cp4500 at iso are very good and capable of producing large prints at reasonable quality, the cp990 on iso200 is very poor.

There are plenty of other aspects of cp990 vs cp4500, but these don't really relate to quality of image so much.
If you can find a cp990 at a good price, go for it..... I wouldn't sell mine for love nor money!
Andy