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Nikon ED82, P5000, FSB-6 problems newbie (1 Viewer)

DDolan1075

Well-known member
I just bought a Nikon P5000, FSB-6, and the 16x24x30x eyepiece to go with my Nikon ED82. I was really psyched about getting to take advantage of my scopes glass. I am trying to get more reach than I get with my Sigma 150-500 and D90, and I had all sorts of problems. I went out yesterday to give it a try and only got 1 semidecent shot of a laughing gull very close up. I am at work right now, so can't post pictures.

First, I can't see the image on my monitor to know if I have everything square and in focus, the screen is too dark. It is not dark outside and so I am assuming that the camera is closing the aperture to decrease the light? The problem is that I am shooting blind!

Second,the quality of the pictures was not good at all. I am hoping that is related to my shooting blindly. A couple of things of note: It has been rainy. I changed from 64 ISO to 400 to allow faster shutter speed, shooting A mode. 400 ISO on my D90 is not a problem, is it a problem on the P&S cameras?

Is there a way to brighten the image on the camera to see what I am shooting? What settings are best for this setup? My FSB-6 came with instructions for setup, but it seems that it slows down the shutter speed tremendously.

I know that I have a lot of questions, and I am looking into taking a class on digiscoping at the next bird festival I go to next month, but it seems that this is not as easy as it should be for me to pick up.
 
As with all new cameras, you need to get familiar with the camera's functions & behaviour before mounting onto the scope. I've birded with friends who have similar setup & they take better pictures than what I do on my Olympus E510 with Sigma 50-500mm! So now I'm taking my time & switching bodies to Lumix GF1, something I've had for 2 years now. P5000 is an incredible camera for a P&S.
 
The P5000 is a good P&S as far as image quality is concerned but it has its problems too. One of them is a pretty dark LCD screen (you should check though if LCD brightness is set too maximum in the camera settings). One thing you can do about it is getting a hoodman suncover which helps a bit. Other things the P500o isn't good at is being quick and indeed at iso400 quality will decrease. I wouldn't go further then 200 en be careful not to zoom on the camera too much and let the scope do the work.
 
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