new camera

[graham catley]

having resorted to digi-scoping for th Black-throated Thrush today I realised just how poor my old Coolpix 880 really is!--needing to upgrade I have just come across the Fuji F30and the new F20----I avoid adaptors, unless they are very simple eg home made bits of plastic, so my basic questions are:
are these models suitable for minimalist digi-scoping and is the F20 as good as the F30 and is there anything better?
I did have a Canon A95 for a while but just could not get any decent results with my Swaro 80HD and 20-60 zoom eyepiece----

[Paul Hackett]

having resorted to digi-scoping for th Black-throated Thrush today I realised just how poor my old Coolpix 880 really is!--needing to upgrade I have just come across the Fuji F30and the new F20----I avoid adaptors, unless they are very simple eg home made bits of plastic, so my basic questions are:
are these models suitable for minimalist digi-scoping and is the F20 as good as the F30 and is there anything better?
I did have a Canon A95 for a while but just could not get any decent results with my Swaro 80HD and 20-60 zoom eyepiece----

Hi Graham

IMHO you have two choices for your style of digiscoping, either the Fuji F30 or the Samsung NV3, both now under £150 on the net, Rich Bonser Andy Clifton, Tom Mckinney and Harry Hussey use the Samsung NV3, you can just hold the Samsung NV3 upto the eyepeice and get a decent result, check out Rich Bonser's website, Hermit thrush pics were hand held!

ATB

Paul

[rka]

Agree with Paul.

I too have the older AT80 with the original locking 20-60 zoom. The Sony W,T and N series should also work. I tested with a W1 (passable) and a T10 (quite good).

I'm waiting on my Coolpix P5000. Hopefully it will work well too.

Most choose the Fuji F30 or F31FD.

[NoSpringChicken]

Amazon are selling the Fuji F30 for £125.80 at the moment which seems a good price. I am quite tempted to buy one myself if I could think of an easy way to attach it to my scope.

Ron

[border reiver]

You can get reasonable results from the F30 just by hand holding to the lens of a scope. (if you use timer to activate shutter, manually depressing shutter for immediate picture causes too much shake at times, although I did get lucky a couple of times using the latter method)

Attached pic is using 1st method it can be tricky getting the camera lens in the centre of the eyepiece. Judge for yourself. No editing other than reducing file size for posting.

John

[john-henry]

You can get reasonable results from the F30 just by hand holding to the lens of a scope. (if you use timer to activate shutter, manually depressing shutter for immediate picture causes too much shake at times, although I did get lucky a couple of times using the latter method)

Attached pic is using 1st method it can be tricky getting the camera lens in the centre of the eyepiece. Judge for yourself. No editing other than reducing file size for posting.

John

That's a great picture John, you should edit it and put it in the gallery.

Someone posted a brilliant idea a little while ago to centralise the camera when hand-holding, it consisted of a roll of insulating tape with enough taken off it to allow it to sit snugly in the scopes' eyepiece and the zoom of the camera slipped inside the central hole of the tape. Cost about 50p.
It may work for the F30.

Regards

John

[border reiver]

Many thanks for the tip John. I'll look into it & give it a try. Although I'm now very fortunate to have one of Feathered One's adapter which is very stable to use & results are continuing to improve. I'm hoping to get photoshop soon & then I'll start putting better ones in gallery.

Tried to get a purple sandpiper shot like your one when in Northumberland 2 weeks ago but they wouldn't let me get close enough. Still it was nice to see them.

John

[graham catley]

Hi Graham

IMHO you have two choices for your style of digiscoping, either the Fuji F30 or the Samsung NV3, both now under £150 on the net, Rich Bonser Andy Clifton, Tom Mckinney and Harry Hussey use the Samsung NV3, you can just hold the Samsung NV3 upto the eyepeice and get a decent result, check out Rich Bonser's website, Hermit thrush pics were hand held!

ATB

Paul

thanks Paul--any idea what Richard's website is called---Google failed to locate anything remotely similar

[dogfish]

Google gets it for me, but his website is temporarily frozen cos he's used up his bandwidth.

Sean

[tom mckinney]

NV3 does it for me. I can get identifiable record shots of most things. Attached photo was hand held through a Kowa TS-613 at about 30m distance in decent light.

[Andrew]

Hi Graham

IMHO you have two choices for your style of digiscoping, either the Fuji F30 or the Samsung NV3, both now under £150 on the net, Rich Bonser Andy Clifton, Tom Mckinney and Harry Hussey use the Samsung NV3, you can just hold the Samsung NV3 upto the eyepeice and get a decent result, check out Rich Bonser's website, Hermit thrush pics were hand held!

ATB

Paul
Me too! Got one coming in the post Paul.


[Sits back and waits for someone to reply "Yeah, but WHO are you?" ;) ]

[Rich Bonser]

All

My website is back up - I've finally had to pay a bit of cash to increase my bandwidth.

All of my shots are taken with the Samsung NV3 handheld to a Swarovski scope. As well as producing half decent shots, it also is extremely small and is truly pocket-sized - useful for whipping out if you see something half-decent in the field but not interfering in any way when you're out birding.

All the best

Rich

[Andrew]

...........useful for whipping out if you see something half-decent in the field but not interfering in any way when you're out birding.
Oooh, kinky! ;)

[Gavin Haig]

From a digi-tyro.......the F30 is hardly a housebrick, and here is an example of what it can do - hand-held with a recently engineered 'roll-of-tape' adaptor. Nikon ED82A with 25-75X zoom in overcast conditions.