The Octagon
Ornithological halfwit
Having read many of the invaluable threads on this site, I am considering buying a Nikon ED50 pinkoscope from In Focus. They don't list a price for the body of this scope alone: it is only available in bundles, and the cheapest bundle is £199 for the scope plus either an In Focus stay-on case, or a Velbon CX-686 tripod. Googling led me to this Bristol Cameras page, which shows that this is a video tripod, which they are selling for £45.00. I am definitely not interested in the SOC, as I would prefer to get the CleySpy SOC, which seems to be of much higher quality. So if I go for either of these bundles, it would be the one with the tripod. (I am not interested in any of the eyepiece bundles listed, none of which includes the 50x wide (27x on the ED50) eyepiece that I think I would want if I were to plump for an ED50.) Could someone answer a couple of questions for me, please?
- Does anyone here have any experience of using this tripod? Is it any good? I already have a rubbish camera tripod, which I have had for years. It's good enough for pointing at the garden bird table and the fields on the other side of the garden fence, but would probably be a nightmare to use in the field (and when rotating it, it has a habit of jumping back a little way from where you just adjusted it to, so you have to play a game of "guess where the tripod will jump back to" in order to fix it where you want :-@). I certainly intend to buy another tripod, but the old Argos special could tide me over for a while if I need some time to dither. I just don't intend to buy another piece of rubbish, even if it is part of a discounted bundle.
- I have never dealt with In Focus before. If I make enquiries with them, are they likely to offer me the pinkoscope body alone, for less than the £199 bundle price, or perhaps an alternative bundle with the 50x wide -- or do they like to stick to their advertised bundles?