We get a lot of digiscoping questions each day at Eagle Optics, but I still lack a keen sense for how big or small digiscoping actually is. Are birders really embracing it as a viable method for bird photography? I wonder how many people never call with questions concerning connectivity or adapters and simply hold the digital camera up to the eyepiece.
The 2004 Birdwatcher's Companion has a brief entry on digiscoping that closes with a prediction to "expect rapid evolution." Digiscoping has been around for almost a decade now and I would opine that digital camera and spotting scope manufacturers remain in a period of stasis. To be fair, there have been a few attempts to branch from the trunk of the digiscoping evolutionary tree, but neither the Nikon P1 System or the Kowa TD-1 seemed to catch on with consumers.
Ever since the discontinuation of the Nikon Coolpix 990, 995 and 4500, it seems digiscoping remains a proverbial crapshoot - buying a high-end spotting scope, the manufacturer's digiscoping adapter and pray you can find a point-and-shoot digital camera that will connect to it and deliver the goods. Credit to the conventional methodology, Bill Thompson III recently featured a nice overview connecting a Canon PowerShot A520 to a Swarovski scope on his birding blog.
Now it appears Zeiss will attempt to punctuate the equilibrium with an evolutionary step of their own design - a veritable digital eyepiece. So far this integrated digiscoping eyepiece/digital camera only shows on their German website. Here's the product specification detail:
- 4 megapixels.
- 1.8" LCD display.
- SD card data storage.
- Rubber-armored/waterproof housing.
- Integrated observation eyepiece with 30x(65mm)/40x(85mm) magnification.
- Display can be viewed via eyepiece and integrated monitor simultaneously.
- Wireless remote control avoids vibration during image capturing.
- USB + AV interface for PC and external TV monitor.
- Power supplied via batteries or external power supply.
Is it good? Is it bad? I'll keep you posted...