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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Olympus XZ-1 (1 Viewer)

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davpen

Well-known member
It hasn't been officially announced yet, but the recent 'leak' regarding the new Olympus high-end compact is quite tantalising. Apparently it will use the Panasonic LX5 (10Mp) sensor but with a 28-112mm EFL, f1.8-2.5(!) lens. Course, that in itself isn't any guarantee that it'll be any good for digiscoping but it does sound promising. Hmm, think I'll be holding back on the S95/LX5 for a while longer yet.
 
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This does sound promising. The 28 - 112 mm range is normally very good for digiscoping ( the perfect range is 35 - 105 mm ).
Neil
 
Interesting that you say that the perfect digiscoping range is 35-105mm, Neil. That's probably one of the reasons why I'm still using the Fuji F30 as my main digiscoping camera. Unfortunately, it seem unlikely that a P&S with such a zoom range will ever appear again. 35mm EFL at the wide end would be laughed out of town nowadays. There are already people complaining that the new Olympus doesn't go down to 24mm.
David
 
Here's hoping it lives up to its potential

This camera looks like it could be a great Digiscoping camera. It is compatable with Olympus accesories including a wired remote, has a very fast 4x ED Zuiko lens, in camera stabilisation, and an oled screen. I've been waiting a long time for a new Digiscoping camera and this looks like this may tick more boxes than most.

I really hope the lens works with the 20-60 zoom eyepiece on my Swarovski scope!

Cheers
Andy
 
I had a chance to try XZ-1 with my Swarovski ATM80HD and 25-50 eyepiece today. Unfortunately, the vignetting was too severe to be useful in all focal length.
 
Thanks dustinw. Maybe not so promising after all then. Did you try both the lens and the eyepiece zooms at all lengths or just one of them?

David
 
I tried both of them. Beside the problem of vignetting, the lens project a long distance when zoomed in, I think it's not suitable for digiscoping.
 
dustinw said:
I tried both of them. Beside the problem of vignetting, the lens project a long distance when zoomed in, I think it's not suitable for digiscoping.
Click to expand...
It would still be interesting though to try this camera behind a fixed wideangle eyepiece as these will give lots less vignetting. On the other hand it will stay difficult. The lens catches so much light normally that it might not be suitable behind any eyepiece. Thanks for trying!
 
The fast f1.8 lens on this camera is not that usefull even for a large Kowa 88mm scope unfortunately. Its max f1.8 lens aperture is constrained by the SYSTEM aperture (aka eyepiece exit pupil size).

Generally, f2 is about the lowest practical camera aperture for most fieldscopes once you consider mag needed for an unvignetted view.

With respect to aperture range, the Panasonic LX5 probably has the most ideal lens of all compact cameras currently on the market. But because of its lens length I would probably need to use it with the Kowa 25xLER on the Kowa 88 which maxes out the focal length at 2250mm while most of my shots seem to need 3000-5000mm.

cheers,
Rick
 
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Maybe clutching at straws here, but I see there's an accessory adapter thread on the XZ-1 and also a forthcoming accessory adapter - the CLA-12. Apparently this is designed for use with the TCON-17 teleconverter. In the xz-1's menu there's an option for enabling it for use with TCON-17, which seems to imply that the TCON-17 won't work without this enablement.

So, I'm wondering what the TCON-17 enablement actually does, and whether activating it might somehow make the camera more suitable for digiscoping.

David
 
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For at least two days now I see no formatting when I log into the forum. I get it only in HTML. I'm not sure where I should post this, but I'll ask here if any of you know what the problem is.
 
aostling said:
For at least two days now I see no formatting when I log into the forum. I get it only in HTML. I'm not sure where I should post this, but I'll ask here if any of you know what the problem is.
Click to expand...

I think the problem could be your end and worth checking with different browsers. Which browser are you using? If you get a bad page load it often sticks in your cache until you clear it out.

So - worth clearing your cache - for Firefox for example - http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/How to clear the cache although there are various key combinations which do parts of the job.
 
davpen said:
So, I'm wondering what the TCON-17 enablement actually does, and whether activating it might somehow make the camera more suitable for digiscoping.

David
Click to expand...

To get back to the subject. If the menu option is anything like that on my Nikon p5000 it will only restrict the zoom to be maximum or near maximum. With the teleconverter on my camera and the menufunction off there will be much vignetting at the wide end of the lens but I see no difference when zoomed to the maximum. No doubt the function does more then this like trying to get the fastest shutter time and maybe something with the VR but these are irrelevant for the suitability of the XZ-1.
 
oggbad said:
I think the problem could be your end and worth checking with different browsers.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I see I have no problem when using Safari. The problem persists in Firefox, though, even after I cleared cache as you suggested, and restarted.
 
gerardeux said:
To get back to the subject. If the menu option is anything like that on my Nikon p5000 it will only restrict the zoom to be maximum or near maximum. With the teleconverter on my camera and the menufunction off there will be much vignetting at the wide end of the lens but I see no difference when zoomed to the maximum. No doubt the function does more then this like trying to get the fastest shutter time and maybe something with the VR but these are irrelevant for the suitability of the XZ-1.
Click to expand...

Ah, I suspected this might be the case. Thanks anyway.

David
 
dustinw said:
I had a chance to try XZ-1 with my Swarovski ATM80HD and 25-50 eyepiece today. Unfortunately, the vignetting was too severe to be useful in all focal length.
Click to expand...

I tried my new XZ-1 with my Pentax PF-65EDII spotting scope, with XW14 eyepiece. The vignetting was severe with this setup too, and worst at full zoom. It's easy to see why -- zooming from wide to tele the entrance pupil can be observed retracting inward.

So, a good camera but not for digiscoping.
 
I have been looking at the potential of this camera for long exposure (10 seconds plus) night shots.Just wondering if anyone has given it a try on this camera?
 
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