Digiscoping with the Nikon P5000
I didn't need a new digiscoping camera but I needed a new interest for these hot summer months so I thought I would give the new camera from Nikon a try.
I couldn't get the camera adapter when I bought it but I managed to find a third party adapter with a 52 mm thread. This fits nicely with the Swarovski DCA.
On the Swarovski 30x eyepiece and my " special " setup there is a little vignetting at wide zoom which goes on the first zoom press and doesn't come back until full zoom ( only a little shadowing in the corners ). It's a 10 megapixel, 1/1/8th sensor, the lens is 36 - 126 mm and it's got a 2.5 inch,230,000 dot TFT LCD. This is not rotatable unfortunately.
I've found it easy to use and the results are very good, similar to the output from the Canon A640 but the screen is much better and easier to get focus on the subject.
My major problem with the camera is the slow 0.8 frames/second speed. This makes digiscoping moving birds difficult. The A640 is twice as fast and the 8400 is three times faster. I would also like to have RAW .
I have posted photos digiscoped with this camera on my Swarovski ATS80HD scope at
http://www.pbase.com/neilfif11/nikon_p5000_images
The review of the camera is at
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikonp5000/page15.asp
Neil
