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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Paul Corfield" data-source="post: 1505359" data-attributes="member: 19132">Not too bad. The WO scopes are nicely made but optically they are a bit behind even the cheap Chinese 80ED's. The scope I had before my 80ED was a Zenithstar which I sold for more than I paid for it in the first place so it was a good stepping stone to a better scope.What ISO are you shooting at and how well does the D300 handle high ISO? I shoot at ISO800 for nearly everything with my Canon 450D because no noise is visible and it gives high shutter speeds. If I don't use a teleconverter then I can shoot at between ISO100 to ISO400. I don't put a teleconverter on for small birds until I get over 20m range and anything under that can be cropped while keeping good levels of detail. For a bird about the size of your parrots I could photograph at about 40m without needing the teleconverter. This Sparrow is an example of a fairly tight crop taken at around 20m range without a teleconverter. ISO 400 and 1/1000 sec shutter speed. I tend to shoot hand held, as in the scope is on the tripod but I have all the axis loose so I can tilt and pan around. I focus through the viewfinder and use continuous shutter for small bursts. I refocus every few shots which means I get a high ratio of keepers. Working this way means I can be set up and on a bird within a few seconds and can follow it where ever it goes without having to get everything set up rigid, switch to live view, wait for all vibrations to stop, mirror lock up etc and by then the bird has gone.  I'm more hands on, just point the scope and click away. |=)|Paul.</blockquote>

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