Snake In The Grass

At the Midwest Birding Symposium, my friend Clay Taylor tuned me on to a great digiscoping lens for Micro Four Thirds Cameras. I knew that I would have to get the Olympus 14-42mm MSC lens to pair with my Panasonic DMC-G1 after he let me try it- on my Nikon EDG Fieldscope I can get vignette-free images at nearly any zoom. The internal focus of the lens prevents any bumping and it seems very sharp on initial perusal. As a nice bonus, I found out that it also makes a really nice macro lens when I came across this Common Garter Snake at Boulder Reservoir last week. With the zoom range (28-84mm equivalent), digiscoping friendliness, and excellent macro capabilities, I think that it will be the ideal companion to tote along as a compliment to my telephoto rig. Here are a few macros taken with this new rig- digiscoping examples will follow eventually...

How Cool is This? Nikon Announces Stabilized Scopes

I just got word that Nikon will produce an imaged-stabilized version of the vernerable EDG Fieldscope. There will be straight and angled 85mm models, each equipped with Nikon's VR (vibration reduction) technology that has been perfected in their stabilized camera lenses. I swear by the VR in my 200-400mm f/4 VR Nikon camera lens- it makes hand-holding the rig a reality, even with a 1.4X teleconverter. I think the potential for VR in a scope is pretty amazing, particularly for digiscoping. Using stabilized cameras for digiscoping really doesn't help since they can't counter movements in the scope, so this should be a major weapon for getting sharp digiscoped shots. I'm not sure when I'll get to put my hands on one of these but I'll let you know what I think when I do!!