[Steve-O]

Hello all! I hope someone can give me some advice.

I purchased an Eagle Optics scope a couple years ago, not the best, but it works. This year I purchased a Pentax *ist DS camera and decided to attach it to the scope. I purchased the proprietary Eagle adapter and the correct t-ring et viola, a 1000mm, f10.2 lens for my new camera! I set it up and took a few pics around the yard, all less than 50 feet, and it worked well - nice clear pics on a cloudy day.

Last week-end I 6took this rig to a park, hoping to get some pics of Great Egrets fishing - the results were less than pleasing. Very hard to see the screen on a nice sunny day, so it wasn't until I returned home that I saw the problems.

There was a violet fringing around the white birds - I knew that this might happen, so I wasn't very surprised - an artifact of the lens.

What was worse was that none of the pics was focused correctly. After a couple shots it seemed that the adapter was too loose and I screwed the tube in until I could snug it tight with the set screw...might I have changed the focal length beyond the ability of the lens to focus? Or, is the lens so poor that it cannot focus clearly at 100 yards?

The shots I took in my yard were very detailed and clear, I expected a little degradation at longer distances, so this trial was a disappointment (especially since I had some great action shots of the Egrets hitting the water!)

I will try backing off the tube of the adapter, but am wondering if there is an easier method of fine tuning the set-up, it seems incredible that the change in distance could make such a difference in quality.

Any thoughts or suggestions appreciated...


Steve