> Andre Langevin and i have been talking offline about situationswhere a 1000mm lens is required. we couldn't justify the price either. i spent about $2K on a Pentax PF-100ED spotting scope with> the PF-CA35 adapter to give me a 1250mm/12.5 equivalent. (...)
The spotting scope solution seems to be quite popular here in the UK (Digiscoping) but I've not been tempted myself, yet! (...)
John
What we do is not digiscoping (digital camera right against the scope's eyepiece). In our case, we replace the eyepiece with an adapter specially designed for camera (5 SMC elements, maybe with some ED glass) and fit this light combo (it gets to a 1000mm with the PF-80ED scope) on a film or digital K-mount SLR. I wanted to get an lighter alternative to the big SMC 1000mm f/8. But at f/12.5, it is for use preferably on a sunny day.
I tried it once, 6 weeks ago, on a slightly cloudy day with good diffused light, on the ist D, at 800 iso and 1/1500. I took pictures of an "Ice Canoe" race on the St-Lawrence River. The results were OK, but Herb found that in other light conditions (i.e. contrasty "contre-jour") the combo would show quite a bit of CA (chromatic aberrations). I will eventually take out the big 1000mm f/8 lens, and compare it with Scope combo on the D. My subject will include a vertical white line to kind of measure one type of CA for both lenses.
As an apart, I was able to put over 400 L *** jpegs on a 1 Gb card because of the easilty compressed large snow patches on the river.
If anybody wants to see a photo from the race, I'll gladly email the one I prepared. I still need to review the whole batch to choose the very best 10 or 20. The photo will be found a bit surrealistic by most of you...
I could also put it on a free page but I don't know any places (and I know I should know).
Andre
