Ade
[Sony DSLRs have a non-standard hot shoe. However I have
compared the hotshoe on my Sony A700 with the hot shoe
on the Sony HX400, and it seems that the Sony HX400 does
have a standard hot shoe.
In case you wonder, I don't mount a red dot sight on the
Sony, just on a Canon SX50 bridge camera]
1. I bought sight and mount separately.
2. In fact I have a spare sight and mount, and bought
the same mount that LightInTheBox advertise for it.
You are right that there are very few hot shoe mounts on
the web.
The Rolls Royce of mounts was the Xtend-a-Sight. But the
man who made them has had to suspend production because
of rising costs.
Otherwise there is the mount that comes with the Brando.
And perhaps one or two other mounts including the LITB
type.
The mount works fine for me.
I bought the mount from MiniInTheBox a couple of months
ago, and have used it successfully a few times.
I think the mount was dispatched from China. It
certainly took the usual two or three weeks to arrive
that I have experienced for other Chinese items.
3. Note the illustration on the LightInTheBox webpage may
confuse.
The usual way of locating the rail is extending forwards
from the hot shoe towards the front of the camera, with
no extension backwards from the camera.
Otherwise the end of the rail that extends back from the
camera may prevent you from looking through the
viewfinder of the camera.
To achieve the new location with the LITB sight you
unscrew the piece that is shown in the illustration half
way down the rail, and rescrew it through the slot in
the rail at one or other end of the rail.
4. The spare sight is an Electro Open sight with a 20mm
base.
It's easier to give you the URL of the webpage where I
bought it than to describe it:
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/red-...inum-material-battery-included/701588571.html
To reassure you, the sight fitted onto the mount with no
problem.
5. A problem with mounts can be a sloppy or too tight
fit in the hot shoe.
Hot shoes are not made to precise tolerances!
My mount fitted fine (and seems to preserve its
alignment when dismounted and remounted).
But a bit of filing or wedging may be required.
6. I don't know the Olympus SP100, but I suspect its red
dot sight has the advantage of good ergonomics, at the
price of a lesser feature set than an Ultra-Dot pattern
'open' sight.
So you win and lose by the choice of a Sony HX400 and
separate red dot sight!
7. I bought a second red dot sight--Now my main
sight--to try out a green 'dot' because I am red-green
colour blind, and found that I had low sensitivity 'in
the field' to a red dot.
I give you the feature set and the URL of the sight to
illustrate in full what is on offer.
The URL is:
http://www.aliexpress.com/store/pro...s-33mm-Metal-Tactical-4/508644_702314237.html
The feature set is:
* Choice of red and green dot
* Choice of five brightness levels (I have used three so
far)
* Choice of four dot patterns (I use the cross-hair
pattern).
[Incidentally I chose Top-Win rather than one of the
several other vendors of Electro sights on AliExpress
because of their greater volume of good feedback.]
8. Last a tip!
I use 3.5 diopter reading glasses (£1 from Home
Bargains!) in my current main mode of using a red dot
sight for bird photography.
I scan, locate, and put the camera on the bird using the
red dot sight looking over the top of the glasses; then
achieve or confirm good focus and compose looking
through the glasses at the LCD monitor.
I only rarely shoot on the red dot sight -- Too often
when I do I miss focus; too often I chop off head, tail
or feet.
It will probably be different when I 'advance' from busy
small garden birds to attempting bigger birds in flight.
But that is yet to come!
Stephen
