Sun Shades (1 Viewer)

After shelling out perhaps £1400 on a new Swaro 80, £500 on camera, £150 for a decent tripod, £150 big CF card and Cable release

What should I use as a Sun Shade, magnifier and focussing aid ???

Yep .....a £5 cut-down Jessops slide viewer with a plastic lens which would be more at home in a kids Sherlock Holmes gift set!!!

What is the point of having the best kit if the FINAL 'lens' you look through to help focussing is so cheap and nasty?

Treat yourself to a decent viewer such as the EagleEye Xtend-a-View OR stick with the cut-down slide viewer and save yourself £1400 on the Swaro and buya £50 toy scope!!

Dave Hawkins
Norfolk UK

youcould design and market a shade - the return might even cover your investment in equipment in time!

MV

The Jessops slide viewer is a great idea for those with less pennies to spend than yourself, or myself. Maybe we should praise these people for coming up with clever homemade kit for next to nothing. Not everyone has a £1000 scope.

Are you the same Dave Hawkins that has photos on EagleEye's website and has small prints in an album at their display stand?

SM

Is this perhaps a follow-on post to the thread entitled "Cover for lcd display on digital cameras"? Hold on. Surely it doesn't do to try to compare the job a scope and camera lens does and that the lens magnifying a pixelated little monitor image does? Sure, it would be silly to use a cheap magnifying aid if a reasonably more expensive one gives better results and/or is more convenient in use. I'd be inclined to employ a bit of good old British Empiricism and make judgements based on experimentation and results. Richard has used both and presumably for his purposes has found that this has not represented a downgrade. Looking at his contributions to the gallery and at the pictures on his website, I'd certainly say he's managed to get the odd picture in OK focus too.

I'm certainly not knocking the Xtend-a-View. But I certainly wouldn't want to knock the alternatives for poor reasons.

My three pounds worth (the slide viewer only costs two)

It is only recently that EagleEye (or more appropriately, Photosolve) have produced an Extend-a-view for cameras with a 1.5 inch monitor..... my own use of the Jessops slide viewer was because there was little alternative for the cp4500.

I have had a considerable amount of positive feedback on the slide viewer alternative and the photos that I have seen taken with this item prove the point.

Obviously, I have used it myself and taken a number of images that have passed muster at sizes of A4+. Maybe, not all Jessops slide viewers possess the same optical quality as the one you have used, or it could be down to the user's own eyesight characteristics.

As someone said.... not everyone can afford the best scopes, some people are working on very tight budgets.

My comments reference Sun shades have been taken out of the context.

I intended no offence to previous correspondents or to people on limited budgets who do not have the best kit, my own budget will NOT stretch to a Swaro 80.

I intended no offence to people who through their own initiative and invention are making their own kit. I have made adaptors from empty tablet containers & old shop fittings, sun shades from cardboard & spectacle lenses, cable release arms from bent metal tubing and image locating sights from empty biro tubes.

I said that IF you have spent £1500 on the highest quality optical glass available another £30 on a decent viewer makes common sense.

The only assessment of focus we can make before we press the shutter is on the screen via the lens on the shade. We should be trying to produce the best, evenly magnified, true rendition of the screen possible.

I wish all those using the Jessops viewer good light, no wind and good birds!

Dave Hawkins

Good point, Dave. I hope Richard Ford doesn't think your post was taking the mickey out of HIM. Perhaps you already know he failed his audition for the part of Hulk because he was over-aggressive.

I think the Extend-a-View pretty much invariably gets a recommendation on this forum to new digiscopers. On the flip side, as an example, I do recently remember member Tannin saying that he's happy with a large brim hat as a sunshade (shades of Cecil Beaton?) and the facilities already on the camera for getting focus.

Interestingly, maybe the £30 isn't so little given that some British members took the trouble to buy their Extend-a-View from the States (not sure I'd better give the URL here) to save some proportion of that.

It's that oft quoted question about Brits and DIY : are we resourceful or just stingy, pure and simple?

P.S. I'd better add, I've never met Richard Ford (just in case...)

I have he's huge, tell me is digiscoping and photography a designer or who's got what gear thing? I mean would you get more pleasure out of winning a competition with a two bob throw away instamatic, if you knew you had got a better pic than phil photo, with 15ks worth of all singing all dancing gear? I think I might B

Is that you in the "Smilie" Steve? If you're after the part in the Hulk sequel movie "Hulk II : Green and P*ssed" I think maybe it's time you got an American agent...

Was thinking about this the other day how a kid with a fairly average camera but a serious obsession and patience could manage to find a way to get close to wildlife and end up with superb pictures. I thought kid, because most adults would be too self conscious to lie in undergrowth for hours and by doing so would face a serious threat of arrest.

Hi All

Sorry I hadn’t picked up on this thread.
Why didn’t you reply in the original thread Dave?

Dave Hawkins said:

After shelling out perhaps £1400 on a new Swaro 80, £500 on camera, £150 for a decent tripod, £150 big CF card and Cable release

What should I use as a Sun Shade, magnifier and focussing aid ???

Yep .....a £5 cut-down Jessops slide viewer with a plastic lens which would be more at home in a kids Sherlock Holmes gift set!!!

Click to expand...

Actually Dave it is £1.99. ;-)

Clearly you don’t like the very idea of this Shade Dave, have you ever actually looked through one?

The idea in my option is to block out light so you can see the monitor and get your eye up close for a better chance of correct focus. You can see when you look through it if the image is blurred; you refocus the scope until it looks in focus, you have a good chance of seeing this as your eye is 2inches from the monitor, despite the plastic lens what more do you need.

Dave Hawkins said:

What is the point of having the best kit if the FINAL 'lens' you look through to help focussing is so cheap and nasty?

Click to expand...

Exactly, it is there to “help you focus” you don’t take pictures through it!

Dave Hawkins said:

The only assessment of focus we can make before we press the shutter is on the screen via the lens on the shade. We should be trying to produce the best, evenly magnified, true rendition of the screen possible.

Click to expand...

Certainly, I don't disagree with that of course, but I get on with Sherlock gift set magnifier fine ;-) and would recommend it particularly to those on a low budget.

normjackson said:

Richard has used both and presumably for his purposes has found that this has not represented a downgrade. Looking at his contributions to the gallery and at the pictures on his website, I'd certainly say he's managed to get the odd picture in OK focus too.

I'm certainly not knocking the Xtend-a-View. But I certainly wouldn't want to knock the alternatives for poor reasons.

Click to expand...

Thanks for that Norm
Indeed I have used Xtend-a-View (Photosolve) which I lost, (I’m not knocking it either, its great) quite simply I am not prepared, having now used the £1.99 version to shell out a further £20-£30 for something which is not much different.

That’s my opinion, I have used both and I am on a low budget.

Sorry to shatter the illusion but I am not Big or Green. Though I could be now, having just looked at your Gallery Dave, A good advert for the Xtend-a-View.

All the best

Richard

Just to illustrate a point on the need for a good lens in the shade....yesterday I took someone Digiscoping. Their sun shade lens had a small blemish in the middle.
This was only just apparent on close examination of the screen but was very obvious when you looked an EPOS bar code through it.

Instad of being parralel (never could spell) the lines were bubbled and wavydepending which part of the lens you looked through. Had you used this regularly when doing final focus through the scope, you would have had a different focus point for the same image depending which part of the screen and bird you looked at through it.

Dave