Greetings from Costa Rica (1 Viewer)

Hello, this is Ray, ex Canadian, now living in Costa Rica.

I need advice from the experts. I have never digiscoped, just used superzooms.

There have been so many advancements in new mirroloess Cameras, new long reach zoom lenses, tele adapters, 4k Video, large sensor superzooms, etc, that I want to make sure I am heading the right direction.

So need recommendations on best scope, and best camera

I have a unique opportunity, as I live on a mountain ridge, and spread out below me is 12,000 acres of Carara National Park here in Costa Rica, and we enjoy over 400 species of Birds.

I have a "regular camera" for going hiking, but I have a mountain ridge pool deck / viewing platform that I always spend the 1st 1-2 hours every morning, from 5-7 am, and see (at a distance of 100-500 mts) Macaws, Toucans and a zillion other birds.

so I will not be hiking all over with a digiscope, basically stationary, so no problem with a sturdy tripod/heavy high power scope. But I need to be able to do HD Video, and stay on focus, and often times it is low light, either because its dawn or dusk or there is cloud cover
So with those parameters, need recommendations on best high power digiscope, best tripod, and best large sensor camera "combination"

So should I be investing in a dedicated digiscoping setup?

also, with cameras that already have "built in" zoom ( like the FZ1000 with 4k Video) will the Camera's great autofocus still work when the camera is zoomed all the way out, and I am using a (example) 25-60 scope. If so, what would be the effective zoom range? The Panasonic maxes out at 400 mm zoom, how do I do the math to combine that with the longer range of 60x eyepiece on the digicope. is that "extreme digiscoping" ?

Thanks for any input / feedback

Ray

Hi Ray and a warm welcome to you from all the Staff and Moderators.

I've moved your post to the Digiscoping forum as I think you would be more likely to get the information you want in there. I also subscribed you to this thread so you don't lose track of it. You should get an email when someone replies.

I hope you enjoy your time here with us and will maybe see some of your pictures in the Gallery.

Thanks Delia !

Hi Ray and a warm welcome to you :t:

Thanks KC and all

Hi Ray, I was in Costa Rica last year and at the time had my FZ200 with its 24x zoom (600mm 35mm equivalent). Panasonic cameras allow you to reduce the megapixel size of the image to increase your zoom, so that gave me a 1200mm equivalent. I found that I didn't need to use it at that range all that often, but was handy on occasions. I now have the FZ1000 and I can get 1100mm out of that, or even 1600mm by using a combo of digital and reduced megapixel size. If I go back to Costa Rica, I would have no problems thinking that the FZ1000 would do a great job. I am off to Ecuador in about two weeks and the FZ1000 will be my weapon of choice, as like Costa Rica, I expect to be reasonably close to most of the wildlife, especially with things like hummingbird gardens, which allow you to get in really close. How these cameras work with a spotting scope I cannot say, but they work really well all by themselves. Another option, although I think the camera lacks some features, is the Nikon P900 with an 83x, 2000mm zoom.