[sparrowbirder]

would the number of pixels a camera has make up for the lack of coated lenses on a scope, for example the new coolpix 4500 has 4 million pixels the 995 has 3.5 million!! could a digiscoper with an uncoated scope and the 4500 get similar results to a digiscoper with a 995 and a coated lens on his scope!! I ask this because I have just started digiscoping,I have a kowa821 4500 combo,my birding partner a leica apo and995,at the weekend we achieved very similar results,or was this just beginners luck!!
andy p

[Tannin]

With the vast experience of an entire weekend of digiscoping behind me - and that a weekend of rain and bad light in the Australian winter - I am eminently unqualified to answer your question, Andy. From what I've read here, I would guess that the optics are more important, but I hasten to stress that that is purely guesswork and that others much more experienced than I am will doubtless weigh in with their knowledge.

However, one thing I say with confidence - even though you have doubtless worked this out for yourself long since - is that from the point of view of chosing your equipment and deciding how much to spend on different parts of the kit, the scope is much, much more important. I bought a scope and a camera last week. (ATS80HD & CP 4500.)

I'll have the scope for ... who knows? 20 years maybe?

And in perhaps two years time I'll walk past a camera shop and see a camera that costs $500 (i.e., less than half of what the 4500 cost), has 12 million pixels, 10X optical zoom, a comprehensible menu system, the on-off switch in a less stupid place, zoom controls that fall neatly under the finger, and an LCD screen that is bigger than my thumbnail. Oh, and a standard battery life of 8 hours.

Well, it will have about half of those features, anyway - and I'll buy it. What I'm getting at is that it makes sense to get the very best scope you can stretch to, and if you need to economise, economise on the camera, because you will more than likely be buying a new camera in two or three years anyway. The scope, on the other hand, will last you half a lifetime.

[Ashley beolens]

I know my pictures are suffering due to my scope being quite old and an uncoated model, so I would say that the images are very dependant on the quality of the optics.

[cspratt]

Don't forget the eyepiece. A bad eyepiece can make any good scope perform poorly. A good eyepiece will make a good scope perform optimally.

Chris. Spratt

[sparrowbirder]

interesting comments,thanks,only bought my scope 18months ago with no intention of digiscoping,going to be very difficult to buy a new one now,wish id have known then what i know now!!
may still get some decent results though,time will tell..
andy p

[Highway Man]

Several digiscoping birders that I know have non-flourite scopes they seem to suffer a lot of blue tingeing around the edges of the photos. This seems to be the main problem with non-flouriscopes as flourite scopes do not suffer this. However this problem can be fixed in Photo Shop, though don't ask me how, 'cos I have'nt got a clue.

Mark

[Glen Tepke]

Optics and pixels both contribute to the quality of an image, but in different ways. The main advantage of flourite/ED/HD/APO optics is reduced chromatic aberration, the magenta or blue fringing that appears around high-contrast objects. The main advantage of a higher pixel count is more resolution or detail. Your and your friend's pictures probably came out looking similar because 1) the amount of chromatic aberration is highly dependent on the angle of the light, and you may have been shooting at an angle that didn't produce much, even with your non-APO scope, and 2) the difference in between 3.3MP and 4MP is not enough to be very noticeable, especially if you are looking at the pictures on a computer monitor which can't display as much detail as either camera captures. Pixel counts become more important if you are printing images, especially large prints, which is much more demanding.

Glen

[Andy Bright]

Think of it in Hi-Fi terms with the source (cd player or whatever) equating to your scope and your camera as the speakers... doesn't matter how good your speakers are if the cd player is providing a distorted sound.
Flourite (or equiv.) doesn't make the scope resolve more detail (though it can give that impression)
Andy

[dahyon]

I used to use a busnell discoverer for digiscoping, resolution was not a problem but the chromatic aberration was obvious with both blue and yellow/green artefacts. The digital camera records white as RBG and so does the computer monitor. These can be seen with software like photoshop which defaults to RBG view. The channels menu shows all three individual channels as well as the composite RGB view. This enclosed image has not been altered and shows the green channel which is usually the one manufacturers optimise for maximum correction; the blue channel is also shown, which is usually least corrected as is the case for the busnell and just for good measure the full RBG view. That yellow/green halo is really hard to remove because it appears on all parts of the image. You can correct for the halos but the information within the detail of the image is out of focus for at least one channel and will always be "soft".

[sparrowbirder]

if this chromatic aberration is not that obvious on a computer screen,would it enhance itself more if I attempted to print off an image,would it be worth printing with a non hd scope!! suppose ill just have to give it a go and see!! im actually quite pleased with some of the images ive taken in the first couple of weeks digiscoping,ive posted a couple in the gallery,, thanks for all the comments!!
andy pryce