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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CharleyBird" data-source="post: 2003450" data-attributes="member: 75824">I was lucky enough to be in the Bittern hide in the Lee Valley this morning with a friend and think I met Paul Hackett.  It was something of an equipment fest, as Paul had this fluorite lens/scope, together with the latest Kowa 88 scope and a pair of Kowa 8x33 binoculars.Also notable, there was also one chap with a canon +500mm f4 with 1.4 converter, and another with a pair of 7x42 dialyt.I had my Steiner 10x44 Discovery, but not my Swaro drawscope (would have been good to try it out in comparison set up as a 1200mm lens).The kowa scope is probably the best I've looked through, it had a 30x eyepiece.The bins, well, pick the one that meets your needs, but 20 year dialyts hold their own and are just so easy on the eyes.  The Kowa 8x33 were light and very nice, at 900 quid they ought to be.The kowa fluorite lens/scope is fascinatingly small and light for what you get, while the 500mm lens on the canon looked huge by comparison, bigger in some ways than my drawscope when used with the TLS800+ Nikon. A bittern was showing well, posing for minutes near the hide, the guy with the 500mm + converter had to take his 1.4 converter off it was so close (so my swaro would have been useless);  then it vanished for a while, and suddenly reappeared down the channel with a foot long pike hanging from its bill.  There was a rush to get a shot of this relatively massive fish being carried on the ice.  I have to say that the kowa seemed easier to get into position though both got shots.  Wish I could have seen the results clearly, but did see the feathers zoomed in on the bittern as taken on the kowa, sharp.  Very interesting to see the kit being used.  Thanks to Paul, my friend & I talked about buying equipment all the way back.That bittern is probably still suffering idigestion.</blockquote>

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