john-henry
Well-known member
Well, I couldn't wait any longer to find out what the P5000 was like for digiscoping so broke the piggy bank and bought one, it arrived yesterday.
After charging the battery I managed to get out for an hour or so and give it a try, first impressions - Brilliant, just what I've been looking for for ages.
Only subject I could find was a male Stonechat at about 20yds but managed a few shots.
After our evening meal I managed a few shots of Jackdaws aound the rear garden, these were about the same distance as the Stonechat, and our neighbours cat about 20ft away.
The camera itself is beautifully designed and felt good using it. No vast menus like the Coolpix's but pretty much the same settings - at least the ones most useful to digiscoping. There's even a thumb grip on the back for hand-holders.
I found the menus easy to navigate and understand and settings can be changed quickly.
Vignetting is very good, about the same as the F30 and A95 on my Zeiss 20-60 zoom, a couple of steps of camera zoom (about 1/3rd zoom) and it's gone for good. One thing I did notice is the camera zoom extends slightly more at the tele end than the wide so when setting up to the scope initially allow for this.
Start up time is good as is focusing and shutter lag, perhaps not the fastest around but it doesn't keep you waiting. Continuous shooting is at 0.8 fps, not the fastest again but it didn't really seem sluggish.
I was quite impressed with the lens, sharp with lots of fine detail, a litle noise at ISO200 in dark areas if you blow it up to 100% and look for it, nothing much to worry about in my book. Noise reduction is gentle and there is none of the watercolour effect some other cameras have.
CA the same, a little but not noticeable unless you're making large prints and easily removed in Photoshop etc.
Colour are good, natural, not the rather overdone colours of many compacts these days.
The 10mpx also makes a huge difference to the amount of magnification needed to get a reasonable sized image, rather than zooming up the scope and camera so much it can be cropped instead, hopefully helping to reduce the effects of vibration etc.
There's still loads of things to try with the camera but my first impressions are it's going to be a great camera for digiscoping, certainly as far as I'm concerned.
A few pics below, Levels and USM was applied then they were cropped to 700x500 px at 300ppi then saved for web so they were about 100K, the 'Jackdaw cropped' one this was done by taking the 700x500 Jackdaw pic, blowing it up to 100% and cropping out another piece at 700x500.
Regards
John
After charging the battery I managed to get out for an hour or so and give it a try, first impressions - Brilliant, just what I've been looking for for ages.
Only subject I could find was a male Stonechat at about 20yds but managed a few shots.
After our evening meal I managed a few shots of Jackdaws aound the rear garden, these were about the same distance as the Stonechat, and our neighbours cat about 20ft away.
The camera itself is beautifully designed and felt good using it. No vast menus like the Coolpix's but pretty much the same settings - at least the ones most useful to digiscoping. There's even a thumb grip on the back for hand-holders.
I found the menus easy to navigate and understand and settings can be changed quickly.
Vignetting is very good, about the same as the F30 and A95 on my Zeiss 20-60 zoom, a couple of steps of camera zoom (about 1/3rd zoom) and it's gone for good. One thing I did notice is the camera zoom extends slightly more at the tele end than the wide so when setting up to the scope initially allow for this.
Start up time is good as is focusing and shutter lag, perhaps not the fastest around but it doesn't keep you waiting. Continuous shooting is at 0.8 fps, not the fastest again but it didn't really seem sluggish.
I was quite impressed with the lens, sharp with lots of fine detail, a litle noise at ISO200 in dark areas if you blow it up to 100% and look for it, nothing much to worry about in my book. Noise reduction is gentle and there is none of the watercolour effect some other cameras have.
CA the same, a little but not noticeable unless you're making large prints and easily removed in Photoshop etc.
Colour are good, natural, not the rather overdone colours of many compacts these days.
The 10mpx also makes a huge difference to the amount of magnification needed to get a reasonable sized image, rather than zooming up the scope and camera so much it can be cropped instead, hopefully helping to reduce the effects of vibration etc.
There's still loads of things to try with the camera but my first impressions are it's going to be a great camera for digiscoping, certainly as far as I'm concerned.
A few pics below, Levels and USM was applied then they were cropped to 700x500 px at 300ppi then saved for web so they were about 100K, the 'Jackdaw cropped' one this was done by taking the 700x500 Jackdaw pic, blowing it up to 100% and cropping out another piece at 700x500.
Regards
John