Finally putting it all together. An introduction.

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Friday 15th May 2020 Rather overcast with light showers and occasional sunshine.

I have been bird watching, rather informally, for many decades. Having lived mostly in rural surroundings, I was always exposed to birds in our own large, rural gardens, on my daily, rural walks and during my countless miles while cycling.

Various bird identification books were collected over the years. Though the Internet is often quicker if you know how to search. You also get lots more images to help to pin down the more obscure examples.

I have owned binoculars, of various qualities, for at least half a century. One of my other hobbies [or lifelong obsessions] is amateur astronomy and telescope making. So I have a very long history of handling a whole variety of optics and accessories and using them. Just as I have decades of experience in mechanical and constructional work of all kinds.

Much the same goes for photography. Digital photography became another daily passion and pastime. I have literally terabytes of my own images on numerous hard drives. Mostly taken with relatively inexpensive point and shoot cameras. Taken mostly with my aging Panasonic Lumix TZ7.

Or much less often by my tiny Canon Ixus117HS. The latter was bought primarily for afocal [snaps] photography through my various astronomical telescopes. [Aka: Digiscoping!]

A short zoom and relatively small lens aperture is highly desirable for this. Probably because the lens mostly closely matches the human eye. It avoids serious vignetting and the lens body doesn't physically move as far as longer reaching "super-zooms." The telescope provides all the power. The small camera captures what it sees through the eyepiece.

I still own a bag full of Olympus SLR bodies and Zuiko lenses [somewhere] but had absolutely no desire to drag that lot around the countryside. I usually take more images in a single week, with digital, than I often did in months on 35mm film. A morning walk can easily produce 50-70 images of local landscapes and wildlife. Albeit within the limitations of a 12x zoom Lumix P&S.

Therein lies the problem. I cannot "reach" distant deer, hares or birds without considerably scaling up my camera. While I have tried "afocal" photography through smaller astronomical telescopes, for many years, it was never ideal. The sheer length of achromatic, astronomical refractors made them totally unsuitable for taking on my daily walks in the gorgeous and highly varied Danish countryside. Even the modern, shorter, astronomical apochromats [APOs] are heavy and "unwieldy." They are designed to be used at a fixed location on a massive support. Not being dragged around the firebreaks of the local forest.

Comparison of telescope length without dewshields [sun shields.] 

My 85mm spotting scope matched against 90mm f/11 Vixen achromat. Not quite 1:3 in length but close enough.

The field of view through my astro telescopes was always very small and achromatic aberration [purple fringing] was always a drawback. So I decided to invest, for the first time in my life, in a "proper" spotting 'scope and support system.

After much online research I bought an 85mm of reputable, though not [allegedly] absolutely top flight optics. Swarovski and Zeiss are just far too rich for my tastes. At least not for a first try. My entire set-up has cost less than a single [smaller] Swarovski telescope. My larger aperture will provide shots where a smaller telescope will struggle for enough light. More light means shorter exposures!

So I went for a Vortex Razor II 27-60x, 85mm, angled eyepiece model. The views at 27x is stunningly clear and sharp compared to my astro refractors of similar or slightly larger aperture. Though it gets a bit softer with increasing power I am unlikely to need to use those powers for digiscoping. Or even for visual use. The wide angle eyepiece is great. Instead of "looking down a dark tube" at a bird, I feel as if I am magically brought nearer to the subject.

My tiny, Canon Ixus camera will be zoomed only just enough to rid the image of dark corners. Known as "vignetting." So the modest, minimum 27x of the telescope is already subject to the camera's own "magnification." I haven't checked [yet] but can [probably] safely assume at least 2x on the camera to be rid of vignetting. So the nominal 27x instantly becomes [say] 50x or more!

That's one hell of a long and hideously expensive, telephoto lens in monetary terms! Zoom both the camera and telescope and you can go well over 100x. The equivalent of several meters in focal length. Well beyond any available DSLR prime lens. The telescope is likely to be much lighter and far more compact than any prime lens of a fraction of the focal length.

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