3250mm Lens Combo

[davegee]

Anyone in the market for a 3250mm Lens Combo?

http://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2012/01/a-bit-of-3250mm-fun

DG

[Lin Evans]

Pretty cool - but lots cheaper to do it like I do, and at much higher (nearly double) focal length - here's one from my Nikon CP990 and Meade ETX 90 at 5989 mm

Lin

[davegee]

I knew that you could do it better or bigger.

DG

[Lin Evans]

Hi David,

LOL - I don't know if it's "better" - but it is "bigger.." Actually, the F4 VR 600 is a dynamite lens, but out of my league in costs. The reason I keep my little Nikon CP990 and CP4500 are for digiscoping only. I use them with my Swarovski spotting scope and my Meade ETX-90 which I removed the base from and use only as a spotting scope. The Meade is not nearly as durable (waterproof, fog proof, etc.) as the Swarovski, but with a mirror lens there is never any chromatic aberration and you can buy one of the older model Meade's for under $200. It actually works quite well with the Nikon D7000 as well. I just use a T mount on the camera and a T adapter on the Mead and you get the 1400mm tube focal length of the Meade plus the 1.5x crop on the Nikon giving you 2100mm effective focal length. It's a fixed F14 so you need decent light, but with a rock steady tripod and mirror lockup you can get some amazing frames.

The advantage of the big Nikon F4 is the VR which stabilized pretty well from the frames in your link. Camera shake - even a tiny amount at those focal lengths can wreck a shot. The nice thing about the little digicams used afocal as compared to the dSLR using only the scope as the lens is that there is no mirror to slap so vibration is only what happens via wind or a less than optimal tripod. Sometimes I hang a bag of rocks off the center of the tripod to stabilize it.

Digiscoping can be fun - I'm the original moderator on the digiscoping forum at Steve's Digicam - been doing it since the CP50 Nikon was available. It's lots of fun and sometimes you even get usable material..

Best regards,

Lin

[davegee]

I had a CP995 before the CP5700 which led to the D70.........................

I really enjoyed that little camera.

P.S. Before that I was a C***n man, but please don't tell anyone.

DG