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Reinventing the Wheel, Digitally (1 Viewer)

XRanger

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I'm hoping someone can help me with some camera related questions for a project I've been messing around with. This started a couple of weeks ago when a friend stopped over with some photos he had taken with his film camera and 300 mm telephoto. The photos were taken last autumn at Hawk Mountain, and in one of them you could almost identify the object as a bird... I know, this is not easy stuff. I remembered hearing somewhere about digiscoping, so I got online and checked out sites and read through forum articles. I then did some tests with my Canon S30 and my Kowa scope. Wow, cool stuff, but - a couple of things were readily apparent: image quality wasn't great, as the scope objective lens is not the low dispersion type; target acquisition is really difficult due to small FOV - I can't imagine using a rig like that to get on a closing hawk; and image shake and focus is problematic.. you guys already know this. Curious about the image quality, I tried a few pictures through my binoculars and was pleasantly surprised, so I cobbled together a rig to hold and align the camera to the right eyepiece. The unit was then mounted on a gunstock-type mount, and the left tube is used for aiming and focus. The rig is crude but it shows promise for what I'm looking to do, enough that I'm going to purchase a dedicated scoping camera and refine the mount. Here's the question part. Camera lens position is a factor, because of the limited distance between the binocular tubes. Because of the of the location of it's lens, plus what I've read about the fast capture rate I'm leaning toward the Kyocera SL400. I thought I read that it does but I want to make sure - does the Kyocera have a threaded front lens housing? Also, is there provision for manual focus? I found with the Canon that since I'm focusing with the left tube, I can set the camera to manual focus at infinity, then don't have to use the AF on the camera. Thanks, and sorry for the long post.
 
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It does have manual focussing but doesn't have a threaded lens housing. For more details on this camera, check out this link.

Given that it is now a couple of years old (which is a very long time in digital camera years) you might find that a newer model would give you more features and better quality for around the same price.
 
Thanks for your reply... the lack of an attachment point definitely puts it out of the running. Plus, I ran across an earlier thread that indicates a lot of Kyoceras seem to be biting the dust. I'm now leaning toward something in a Canon A series, I like the bayonet type mounting flange at the base of the lens housing, and since I've been using a Canon, I shouldn't have to start at the bottom of the learning curve.
 
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