Spotting scope for Canon A630 (1 Viewer)

Hello birders,

I posted this originally at the Canon thread but I guess this is the best forum to get advise on.

Can you recommend a good spotting scope to complement my Canon Powershot A630? I already bought the camera so I'm stuck with it. I'm eyeing the Celestron C90 Mak firstly because of its cost and secondly because of its good reviews. I'm just a little wary if the two will do well together. My camera's lens range is 7.3(W) - 29.2(T) and f/2.8(W) - f/4.1(T) with 4x optical zoom. The C90 Mak on the other hand has a focal length of 1200mm and comes with a 32mm eyepiece. I'm a beginner in photography and I'm just trying to learn how to use the camera settings so please bear with me if my terminologies are not correct.

My considerations for buying will definitely be cost because of my tight budget.

Has anybody tried this combo? If so, can you please post some of the results and possibly the setup and settings to obtain those shots?

By the way, I will mainly be using this for bird photography.

Thanks,
Eric

I've read that these Canons cause vignetting owing to their unusual zoom characteristics but there as a thread here not too long ago where I'm sure someone's had success - try a search.

scampo said:

I've read that these Canons cause vignetting owing to their unusual zoom characteristics but there as a thread here not too long ago where I'm sure someone's had success - try a search.

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Thanks scampo. I think I saw that thread. I'm not too familiar with lenses so I'm not sure if the specifications of my camera and that of Celestron is usable as a combo. It seems that the Celestron's exit pupil (?) is 90mm/32mm = 2.8, which is the same as the camera's at wide angle. Does this mean that vignetting will be minimal if not totally absent? Are my computations correct or totally off? And if I zoom my camera to 4.1, does this mean that vignetting is so bad that it's not even usable?

Thanks,
Eric

tariktik said:

Thanks scampo. I think I saw that thread. I'm not too familiar with lenses so I'm not sure if the specifications of my camera and that of Celestron is usable as a combo. It seems that the Celestron's exit pupil (?) is 90mm/32mm = 2.8, which is the same as the camera's at wide angle. Does this mean that vignetting will be minimal if not totally absent? Are my computations correct or totally off? And if I zoom my camera to 4.1, does this mean that vignetting is so bad that it's not even usable?

Thanks,
Eric

Click to expand...

I'm afraid I'm no expert on the physics of it all. Your suggestion makes sense - hopefully someone else here will have a better answer.

If you can, try one out, that way you'll soon know if its sutible.

Ant said:

If you can, try one out, that way you'll soon know if its sutible.

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I'm afraid that trying one out is not on my options. There are no local distributors of Celestron here in my country. If I do decide to purchase one, that would mean purchasing from abroad. If I find out that it's not usable, that would be too much hassle and expensive if I decide to return it.

Thanks,
Eric

I would say that most people in the UK would not buy an astro-scope for bird photography; rather, they would buy a spotting scope from one of the big manufacturers:

Swarovski
Zeiss
Leica
Kowa
Nikon

Each of those scopes is in use in the UK for digiscoping purposes. The ideal seems to be to choose a lower power eyepiece with a good eye relief. The zooms for Leica, Zeiss and Swaro seem ideal, the 20xW or 30xW seem ideal for Kowa and Nikon.

There is at least one thread on the forum concerning the use of a similar camera to your own - the Canon A640.

An excellent new swing type camera adapter is now available in the UK from a company called SRB Griturn that can be made to suit your camera to one of those scope/eyepiece combinations.