You have some valid points Stewart. A freind of mine has said much the same but
I think that when this beast actually gets some testing done on it by birders,
people will find that it does a creditable job for the magnification. An f2.8 -
f4.0 lens is quite speedy compared to any combo of scope & camera. What image
stablization does anybody use now? Some of these digiscoped images are pretty
sharp. My big concern would be noise introduced by the CCD at ISO 200. My Canon
G3 is quite noisey at that level. If this scope is the same it will be hard to
get a real good image.

I did a search and can't find any user info on it so I guess we'll have to wait
ad see. It is pricey!

Roger

Stuart MacKay wrote:

> I agree with the comments on the dpreview web site "3 million pixelks, ISO
> 200 and no image stabilization" - save your money. You can do much, much
> better with a good fluorite lens spotting scope (my 10 year old Kowa TSN4 is
> fantastic) and a used coolpix 900 for about half the cost.
>
> Having said that the 450 - 1350 mm F2.8 - F4.0 zoom lens would be useful for
> situations where the birds come in too close to focus down with a regular
> spotting scope.
>
> If Kowa don't get too discouraged if it does not sell, then perhaps after 2
> or 3 iterations/revisions of the product they might acutally produce
> something worthwhile.
>
> I'll be staying in the Magic Kingdom for the forseeable future.
>
> Stuart
> --
> Stuart MacKay, Seattle, WA