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Kowa 883/DA 10/DA 4 with Sony DSC-RX 100 (1 Viewer)

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paperweight

Well-known member
My hobby has been asleep for a while, and I think one reason was that I found working with the Kowa and a Fuji X100 was not easy and fast, and I kept coming back to my old battered Canon Ixus which is a joke when I compare picture quality.
The Sony DSC-RX 100 seems a great camera for digiscoping, and I would like to know if it works fine with DA10 and DA4. I would hate to invest in new adapters. My eyepieces for the 883 are the 30x and the 22-60x. I got those when I bought the Kowa about 4 years ago.
I see the RX 100 has three versions and I have learned only the II and III offer a tiltable screen which I find a great improvement for the 883. Which other features that are different between the models are essential for digiscoping? I have read there is remote control (surely a good idea) and a very expensive finder (maybe a good idea when you don't want to disturb birds by too much light coming from the screen.
Thanks for your help.
I guess I will eventually sell my Fuji X100 black limited incl. the wide angle adapter for an RX-100.
 
paperweight said:
My hobby has been asleep for a while, and I think one reason was that I found working with the Kowa and a Fuji X100 was not easy and fast, and I kept coming back to my old battered Canon Ixus which is a joke when I compare picture quality.
The Sony DSC-RX 100 seems a great camera for digiscoping, and I would like to know if it works fine with DA10 and DA4. I would hate to invest in new adapters. My eyepieces for the 883 are the 30x and the 22-60x. I got those when I bought the Kowa about 4 years ago.
I see the RX 100 has three versions and I have learned only the II and III offer a tiltable screen which I find a great improvement for the 883. Which other features that are different between the models are essential for digiscoping? I have read there is remote control (surely a good idea) and a very expensive finder (maybe a good idea when you don't want to disturb birds by too much light coming from the screen.
Thanks for your help.
I guess I will eventually sell my Fuji X100 black limited incl. the wide angle adapter for an RX-100.
Click to expand...

The RX 100 series will work fine on your DA4 and it likes a fixed 30x eyepiece , although the zoom is fine too but you need to zoom the camera lens out a bit further to avoid vignetting. The RX 100 M3 has a built in Electronic Viewfinder which the others didn't have and you can install the Sony apps and control the camera by wifi ( the RX100 M2 has wifi too but no apps). The HD video has been upgraded in the M3 version too but the video in the M1 and M2 is still 1080/50p which is better than most cameras.
I have all three if you have any more specific questions and I have the Kowa 30x and 20-60x eyepieces too.
Neil.
 
Neil, thanks for your very detailed and helpful information. I have had the pleasure to gain valid details from you over the last years.
The new RX 100 has details that will make me look for one.
 
I did a lenghty test with my Fuji X100 yesterday, and again and again I'm surprised by the quality of the pics. Has anybody tried the TCL-X100 tele adapter? I guess it might reduce vignetting which is of course a problem since the X100 has no zoom.
I think I might get a Sony RX-100 just for digiscoping in the end and I do hope picture quality will be as good as shown in the example of a buzzard caught yesterday with the Kowa 883, a 20-60 eyepiece set to 30x and a Gitzo tripod with 3D head. If you use spot AE, you will get good results in spite of the vignetting, and after conversion from RAW to JPG I crop pictures most of the time, anyway.
 

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I doubt the Sony will match the Fuji for IQ. I have the x100s and the image quality is clearly better than that of my Canon 7D. I don't use the x100s for digiscoping though.
 
Thanks, Graham. The Fuji X-100 seems a natural born dilemma for digiscoping... I know it wasn't designed for that purpose. Which camera do you use for digiscoping?
 
I have not decided yet on getting the RX-100. I really love the IQ of the Fuji X-100. I did two shots in a very cloudy situation at ISO 6400 this afternoon in my garden. The rose is the full picture, no cropping, and the pidgeon has been cropped. I have not applied any colour correction, just levels and a bit of unsharp masking. In both examples, the Kowa eyepiece is set to 60x.
I might even climb up the quality ladder and get a full sensor size camera like the RX1R. For years I had a Leica M6/7/8 with very good aspheric lenses, and I love to hunt for bokeh.
Has anyone out there tried the RX1R for digiscoping?
 

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Last edited:
paperweight said:
I have not decided yet on getting the RX-100. I really love the IQ of the Fuji X-100. I did two shots in a very cloudy situation at ISO 6400 this afternoon in my garden. The rose is the full picture, no cropping, and the pidgeon has been cropped. I have not applied any colour correction, just levels and a bit of unsharp masking. In both examples, the Kowa eyepiece is set to 60x.
I might even climb up the quality ladder and get a full sensor size camera like the RX1R. For years I had a Leica M6/7/8 with very good aspheric lenses, and I love to hunt for bokeh.
Has anyone out there tried the RX1R for digiscoping?
Click to expand...

The X100 is a nice stills camera but not very good for serious digiscoping.
Vignetting with zoom eyepieces
very slow processing a raw burst of 7 frames
terrible video
unreliable AF

The X100s should be a big improvement for these problems, except the vignetting.
Moving to a full frame camera will make the vignetting worse and the AF will be poor too. Don't forget it's trying to AF through an F11 lens. If you're happy with MF though and get the 30x eyepiece it could be ok.
Neil.
 
Thanks for your expertise, Neil. Before a session, I have tried to minimize focus problems by setting the X-100 to 16 (aperture) and adjusting the camera on the DA-4 while keeping the release button half way down, taking it to "operational aperture" and watching the result on the screen. That way, you can really find the best position for the X-100 on the DA10/DA4.
I understand digiscoping with the DA4/DA10 will finally be compromise between IQ and smooth operation. I will have a look at an RX100 M3 and will do a proper trial.
 
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