Reticle Sight for wildlife photography .... (1 Viewer)

John Cantelo

Well-known member

• Jan 31, 2014

• #1

I've a Panasonic G3 which I find an excellent camera except that I find it difficult to track birds in flight. More often than not I'm left with nothing, the tail end of the bird or, when I try to compensate, just the foreparts! Hence I was interested to see the new Olympus Stylus SP 100 (see thread) has a built in 'red dot' sighting gizmo. Then I found you can buy one to slot into the hot shoe of most cameras (see below). However, the cheap price ($39) is doubled for postage to the UK! So can I ask -
a) are they available 'over here'?
b) has anyone had any experience of using such a device? Does it work as promised?

https://gadget.brando.com/wildlife-photography-with-tactical-four-reticle-sight_p01341c073d3.html

 

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Mono

Hi!

Staff member

Supporter

• Jan 31, 2014

• #2

There was a thread a while back

http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=223456

 

dantheman

Bah humbug

• Jan 31, 2014

• #3

Postage for 2 plus looks to be $49 ...

or $3 within the US. Club together? ... Got any friends/relatives out there? ...

 

Ratal

Well-known member

• Jan 31, 2014

• #4

I owe you a beer John Cantelo!

That is an AMAZING find - I am having one of those for my camera. (I have one for my spotting scope and it works a treat but never in my wildest did I ever think I could get one for a hot shoe on a camera! legendary gadget!)

 

the black fox

Well-known member

• Jan 31, 2014

• #5

they are available from amazon u.k from around £17 upwards ,the missing link being the hot shoe adaptor ,but i,m researching that now

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=sr_nr...cal+four+reticle+sight&ie=UTF8&qid=1391177126

 

John Cantelo

Well-known member

• Jan 31, 2014

• #6

Thanks to all.

Ratal, if you get out to Spain when I'm there I'll take you up on your offer .... perhaps you can bring the beers up to our terrace whilst you take photos of those Lesser Kestrels & show me the sight!

 

Farnboro John

Well-known member

• Jan 31, 2014

• #7

There is an exact parallel here with use of reticle sights by "action pistol" target shooters. Back before the lunacy, I watched these guys double-tapping bullseyes in pop-up targets while literally running across the range at full tilt with their "race guns". I'm sure with practice they will open up huge opportunities for "shooting" BIF. I may have to treat myself sooner or later....

John

 

iveljay

Well-known member

• Feb 2, 2014

• #8

Some of my 1960s cameras had flip up Albada viewfinders that had both frame and a central reticle. Theory being that you didn't waste time trying to locate a fast moving object through a 'tube' style viewfinder and then use the reticle to pan steadily as the combination of slow film speeds and huge crop on up to 60mm film was tricky to master.
A rifle style mount for the camera helped steady panning.

I had some of the resulting slides cropped and mounted in standard 18x24 Pen mounts until fairly recently. Worked remarkably well.

 

gvca1

Well-known member

• Feb 12, 2014

• #9

There is a forum member over on the Digiscoping sub-forum who posted some photos of very nice astronomy scopes set up for photography. He has reflex sights mounted on several of those. (See "Ultra High End Rigs").

It seems like it might be useful on very high magnification setups, like beyond 800mm, or with a crop camera on, say, a 600, like the Nikon 1 V1.

Jim

 

K

kankushok

Active member

• Jun 9, 2014

• #10

I've used these before when I had a panasonic fz-30. They worked very well for me then. I find them not as necessary with optical viewfinders. Also for larger DSLR setups you also have to deal with more parallax problems. Depending on your setup, the amount of play in the mount could also result in severe inaccuracies. Because of these issues, I've not successfully used them on my current setup (a77, 70-400).

 

A

ade_long

Member

• Aug 25, 2014

• #11

Red Dot Sight Finder for cameras now available in UK

Red Dot Sight Finder looks as though gadget brando no longer sell it.

https://gadget.brando.com/wildlife-p...341c073d3.html


However there is an alternative product being sold in the UK at £16.20

See
http://www.365astronomy.com/blitz-hotshoe-dslr-camera-adapter-for-red-dot-finder-p-3593.html