Question About Digiscoping

[Big Sky]

I was thinking about getting the panisonic zs10 camera for digiscoping and general use and thought that the 16x zoom would be nice. Why cant you zoom the camera all the way out while digiscoping?

[Elkoholic307]

Compact cameras with a MAXIMUM zoom of 3x to 5x will give you a nice image with less vignetting. A 16x will vignette through a spotting scope through the entire zoom range. Vignetting is what you call the black field around the circular image.[/URL]

Big Sky - I thought the same way you do now, until Bitterroot told me this ^

Do you understand what he's talking about? If not, I'm sure someone can post a pic for an example.

[Elkoholic307]

This may not be a great example, but this is how I interpret vignetting.

By the way, this is not my picture. I stole it from a friend.

[Big Sky]

I understand what the problem is but I dont know why you cant zoom the camera all the way out?

[Bitterroot Bulls]

I understand what the problem is but I dont know why you cant zoom the camera all the way out?

If you zoom all the way to 16x on the camera you might get rid of vignetting, but your total focal length is going to be VERY long. The focal length of your scope is going to be multiplied by the focal length of the camera. This will provide an extremely dim image, lots and lots of shake, and slow shutter speeds. So, you end up with dim and blurry pics and video.

Elkoholic's pic above shows vignetting, and also shows significant Chromatic Aberration (CA). The CA is the blue and pink color fringing at high contrast areas in the pic. It is more than likely that the spotter was not a HD/ED/APO/FL scope.

[Big Sky]

Thanks Bitterrot I have been wondering that for a while and that cleared it up.

[fatrooster]

Another example of vignetting.

fatrooster.

[BigSurArcher]

And here are a couple more examples from just the other day when I visited NV.

This problem would have been solved if I just zoomed the camera in a little but I was in a hurry to get the shots. I wish I focused the scope a little better and zoomed the camera for the second pic because its a pretty good one.

[fatrooster]

BigSurArcher, great pictures. Sorry, I didn't see the private message you had sent me until your trip was over. When you come back I'd be glad to buy you a beer or soda and talk hunting. Hope you and your girlfriend had a good time in Nevada. fatrooster.

[fatrooster]

And yet another example. There is a buck in this picture. A friend of mine took this pic.

fatrooster.