Spotting scope

[digipics]

Hi,

I'm thinking of buying a spotting scope, the kind that have a built in camera.
I've seen a couple and wondered if there is anyone on here who has any experience with one.
I'd be grateful for any help.

[almostnormal]

Originally Posted by digipics

Hi,

I'm thinking of buying a spotting scope, the kind that have a built in camera.
I've seen a couple and wondered if there is anyone on here who has any experience with one.
I'd be grateful for any help.

hi. i think its probably fair to say that built in camera scopes aren't as good as proper scopes with attachments for decent cameras. most scope companies now do camera attachment gear. leica do a nice camera to go with the gear as well. best to go for a good quality scop, and a good quality digi scoping kit, rather than a halfway between thing with not as a good quality components. sarah

[JonSadler]

I agree with the last post. Combined 'anythings' tend not to be very good - you get the worst of both worlds. I'd suggest checking out second scopes. You can often find good ones with great optics that are not the 'new range'. Thereafter, look around for digiscoping accessories and take it from there. It will cost more but you will get much better results.

Regards
Jon

[richardkm]

We had a spotting scope with built-in camera to try out in the shop. It was useless, too slow, and lacked the variable magnification of the spotting scope/compact camera combination, plus it retailed at over £1400. You could get a damned good scope and camera for less than that.

If you want to digiscope, there are two manufacturers that I would recommend for scopes - Kowa and Swarovski. As far as cameras for digiscoping, there are several, but the new Nikon P5000 looks an excellent choice - 10Mp and no vignetting.

[almostnormal]

for £1400 you can get the new Televid APO 62 from leica, plus the camera C1 lux which is leica's own designed to work with the APO 62/77, and the adaptor kit and the scope cover and a manfrotto scope tri pod!! the best scope out there with all the accessories!!

[thunder]

Originally Posted by almostnormal

for £1400 you can get the new Televid APO 62 from leica, plus the camera C1 lux which is leica's own designed to work with the APO 62/77, and the adaptor kit and the scope cover and a manfrotto scope tri pod!! the best scope out there with all the accessories!!

All for a mere £1400!

henrya

[zharca]

Hi, On the Nikon stand at Birdfair they were showing a very neat digiscoping setup using one of their latest little coolpix compact cameras and an "FXB" adapter. An important point was that it gave a full-screen image without vignetting. It was being demo'd on one of the little ED50s which made a very small, light setup and would have come in at about 800 quid with an eyepiece for the scope as well. On that 'scope it was giving an exposue of about 1/125th at 20x on a not particularly bright day, so I guess you would gain a couple of stops on one of the bigger scopes. Maybe worth a look at.