Hello, tweets.

The posts by John Tubbs and others (even if by mistake) are of interest, especially the stark contrast between a point-and-shoot camera like the Panasonic Lumix and many others with shockingly large zoom ratios (up to about 25x now) that are usually <$1000 and a very high-end mind-numbingly expensive Canon (or Nikon) setup.

Several of us in the local birding community are using gear that costs *only* about three thousand dollars - Nikon D300 camera (now D300s) with Nikon 300 mm f4 lens + 1.4x teleconverter (TC-14E II). This gives you a 420 mm lens, and with the 1.5x multiplication factor because the sensor is smaller than a 35 mm slide, gives you the equivalent of a 630 mm lens on a film camera. This is a very sharp camera and lens combination, and the telecoverter works beautifully with the lens. The D300 is forgiving in low light situations, as you can set a pretty high ISO (up to 3200) and still get sharp photos. No, they won't be the quality of the equipment that John mentioned, but they're pretty darned good. I'm sure there is a Canon equivalent.

Dennis
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Dennis Paulson
1724 NE 98 St.
Seattle, WA 98115
206-528-1382
dennispaulson at comcast.net