Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 18:57:33 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Douglas Bolt Subject: Fw: [MDOSPREY] Digiscoping MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Ben, There are about as many solutions to digiscoping as there are folks doing it. I'd suggest you subscribe to a couple of Yahoo groups to get started. One called Digiscopingbirds is devoted to equipment and technique. Great forum! Go to yahoogroups.com and search for "digiscopingbirds" and then subscribe. The other yahoo group is called Birds-pix. It focuses on the finished products. Some of the pics by the experts are simply outstanding. Based upon info from Digiscopingbirds, I think the most popular setup at the present is a Nikon CoolPix (990, 995, or 4500), a HD/APO scope, one of the many adapters to couple the camera to the eyepiece of the scope and a shutter release mechanism. However, you can get good pics with many setups. And, I suspect no more than 10 % of the digiscoped pics get saved. I know most of mine are completely junk. But considering the price of "film", I just keep snapping. Regarding the backlighting problem, there are several shades with built-in magnifying lenses discussed on Digiscopingbirds. I have some pictures of the equipment I use at http://www.boltassociates.com/Digiscope-equip/ . The pictures are not captioned, but they might give you some ideas. Gotta get too that! If you look around boltassociates.com (eg. http://www.boltassociates.com/Thai-Birds/) you can view several pics taken with this equipment. Then, if you want to see some really good pics, go to Birds-pix and look at pics by some of the folks using "real camera", such as a Canon 10D or a Nikon D100. You may reconsider going the digiscoping route. I am. Douglas Bolt Visit http://www.boltassociates.com/ for Current Weather in Beltsville, MD, plus pics of family, friends, birds, plants and places. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ben Poscover" To: > Sent: Wednesday, January 28, 2004 11:42 AM > Subject: [MDOSPREY] Digiscoping > > > Again I must come to you for advice. I am interested in getting a > digital camera in which to do digiscoping. Those pictures of birds > taken using this technique are amazing. > The scopes that I would be using are a Swarovski Habicht ST80 with zoom > 20x - 60x.eyepiece. When I fly to locations, I take a smaller Bausch > & Lomb > scope with a 15 to 45 zoom eyepiece. > I have a Digital Mavica camera now but have been unsuccessful in trying > the technique with it. The reasons are: > a.. Trying to see any image on the LED screen in the back of the > camera in > bright light.. > b.. Trying to orient the camera so that an image will appear on the > screen. > c.. Trying to get a sharp image. when I do > d.. My skill > What I would like to ask is what characteristics should I look for > in a > digital camera? > > Thank you for your help. You can address your replies to: > > Ben Poscover > Towson MD > bposcove@bcpl.net > > > I > > > ====================================================================== > = > To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com > with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey > ======================================================================= > ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================