First outing and post (1 Viewer)

My first digiscoping trip to the local wetlands resulted in some interesting observations.
1. What I thought was a duckling turned out to be a little grebe!
I had seen what I thought was 2 ducks and a duckling on several occasions at some distance, never close enough to consider photographing with my FZ50. Today they came closer and I had my new scope with the camera . I was surprised what I saw in the first photo. These birds seem to travel as a threesome!?

2. My scope is an Long Perng 80mm achromat (makers of WO scopes) and even with a WO fringe killer filter I still get fringing effects. See second photo of the white faced heron. I will have to save my pennies for an APO I think.

Not too disappointed with the first outing though.B

Keith

welcome to birdforum !

and u had a nice result with your digiscoping kit hehehe

Hi Keith and welcome.

looking at your photos the first one is of a Little Grebe.

Your Long Perng 80mm achromat looks very similar to my old WO Zenithstar 80. I actually paid for the Long Perng scope but the shop had sold out and sent me the WO instead at no extra cost. It suffered from fringing quite a bit in bright conditions and I tried the Baader Semi Apo filter which worked to a point but I lost a lot of light with it. I sold my WO ZS80 and purchased a Skywatcher Evostar Pro 80ED which was a similar price. It has a fluorite glass element in it and you can't detect any fringing at all in any situations. It's about as close to an apo as you can get without spending ridiculous apo prices.

For a good idea of what the scope can do have a look in my gallery or better still have a look here at this guys photos. He uses the same scope and combines it with Kenko Pro teleconverters, either a 1.4X ot a 2X. I use a Vivitar 1.5X converter. http://fernandobatista.smugmug.com/

Paul.

Keith,
Excellent job on your first digiscoping trip. The combo certainly seems sharp enough. Try reducing the "fringing" with software adjustments. Neil.