I am new to birding but not photography. I have always found that I get double or overlapped images using bin's. As such I am thinking of buying a scope, something like the Opticron Imagic 65 with their digiscope lens. I want it small enough to be able to hand hold and carry when I am walking around.
Realistically with two young kids I don't get much time to wander off and sit in a hide for a few hours, so most of it will be out the back kitchen window, looking at birds that are less than 10 metres away.
I also have a Coolpix 4500, a great camera. I like the close focus and the panarama modes and is the closest to my Nikon F50 in useage I have come across in digicams. I want to connect this up to a scope as well. I manged some shots of the moon by placing the camera to my telescope eyepiece.
The way I see it is;
1) I don't want a large magnification as the camera has a 4x zoom, you can't hand hold a 30x scope but probably could if it is was only around 10x and lower magnification means brighter image.
2) These large scopes get more light (not as much as my 200 mm Newtonian reflector) but they can not focus as close as the 60 mm dia scopes and are bigger and heavier.
3) I don't have much money to spend.
Am I mad and totally missed the point of scopes?
Has anyone compared the exposure settings of a camera connected up an expensive 80 mm scope to a 60 mm scope with fancy glass and a cheaper scope? How many exposrue steps different were there?
One sad thing about all the current digicams (compacts, not sure about SLR's) is they have a delay from shuter press to photo take. If that delay is critical then you should seriously thing about staying with a film camera.
Regards,
David
Realistically with two young kids I don't get much time to wander off and sit in a hide for a few hours, so most of it will be out the back kitchen window, looking at birds that are less than 10 metres away.
I also have a Coolpix 4500, a great camera. I like the close focus and the panarama modes and is the closest to my Nikon F50 in useage I have come across in digicams. I want to connect this up to a scope as well. I manged some shots of the moon by placing the camera to my telescope eyepiece.
The way I see it is;
1) I don't want a large magnification as the camera has a 4x zoom, you can't hand hold a 30x scope but probably could if it is was only around 10x and lower magnification means brighter image.
2) These large scopes get more light (not as much as my 200 mm Newtonian reflector) but they can not focus as close as the 60 mm dia scopes and are bigger and heavier.
3) I don't have much money to spend.
Am I mad and totally missed the point of scopes?
Has anyone compared the exposure settings of a camera connected up an expensive 80 mm scope to a 60 mm scope with fancy glass and a cheaper scope? How many exposrue steps different were there?
One sad thing about all the current digicams (compacts, not sure about SLR's) is they have a delay from shuter press to photo take. If that delay is critical then you should seriously thing about staying with a film camera.
Regards,
David