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Message: <blockquote data-quote="njlarsen" data-source="post: 1200649" data-attributes="member: 7427">I think you will have a hard time finding one camera that will be great for both stand alone bird photos and digiscoping. The digiscoping experience is often good with a camera that is a point and shoot with 3-4x zoom lens: this <a href="http://www.birdforum.net/forumdisplay.php?f=305" target="_blank">http://www.birdforum.net/forumdisplay.php?f=305</a> forum discusses that kind of cameras. Occasionally, someone identifies a dSLR lens that can be adapted for the same use. For the stand alone camera you would normally want a lens that is a zoom lens or prime lens in the 400+ mm equivalent range. For the words semi-pro to apply I would guess you should be looking at a dSLR + a prime lens. Most dSLR has a crop factor, so a 300 mm lens will be equivalent to the old 35mm designation of 400mm. My own esperience is that I dont want to go back to a SLR (I used to have a film SLR setup) because I dont want to carry both the scope and the camera equipment. Therefore, I have gone the way of the P&S camera with an extended zoom range. For years, I have used a Nikon coolpix 4500 + a teleconverter, which offered digiscoping and some ability to do stand alone bird photography, limited by only being able to use the LCD for finding the bird. This package weighed in at about the same as the camera body in a SLR. I now am purchasing a superzoom camera (panasonic DMC-FZ18, 500 mm equivalent) to gain an (electronic which is less great than what the SLR have) viewfinder. Again, about 1 lbs = ½ kg. (A second reason for looking at a new camera is that I am fast approaching the 10000 images on the cp4500, and I therefore expect it would fail one of these years. It will still serve as my digiscoping camera until it does fail). If you want something in between the FZ18 and the SLR, you could look at the fuji s100fs: larger sensor should result in less noise (and does according to reviews) with better high iso performance. Has a shorter lens to 400mm equivalent, but more pixels probably will result in about the same number of pixels on the bird from the same distance. Weighs about 3x what the FZ18 comes in at. There are some cameras similar to the FZ18 including a new announcement from Nikon; I suspect that there are not that many just like the Fuji mentioned above. In the SLR range, the Olympus cameras with a 2x crop factor probably could make a package with punch weighing less than what Nikon/Canon would do. (2x crop factor meaning that a 200 mm lens becomes a 400 eq lens). Hope this helps. Niels</blockquote>

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