Digiscoping with the Leica D-Lux 5 Review.

I thought id try to describe the type of Digiscoping set up I'm Currently using  which is the Leica D-Lux 5 with Leica Adapter Connected to my Leica Apo 82 Scope.

Now Digiscoping is the art of Photography by attaching a held hand Camera to a Spotting scope. This can produce very good results and means not having to spend a fortune on fancy Len's for fancy and expensive DSLRs, it also means not having to get so close to birds to photograph them. Oh yes and less to carry around, I'm a birder first photographer second.

Now if I'm honest the art of digiscoping still means the better photos are coming from a distance of between 10-30m but decent record shots can be obtained from birds 100m away and in poor light as in the Picture below. Click the picture for full view.

I'm Still on a massive learning curve but feel I'm getting some very good results with this setup both at close range and longer distant range. The pic below taken at below 25m

I've been using this camera and Scope setup since September and I'm changing settings continually but I find at present the best settings are as follows:

I'm using the camera on Aperture Priority. Ive worked out how to brighten my image by upping the f stop to 4.0 so now Aperture prority seems better than Programme as i was using before. On really nice days Programme may be worth a play.

The other settings are:

>Spot metering.

>Standard color mode.

>AF macro mode which is on the side of the camera and all shots are taken at the full 10mb.

>Aspect picture ratio is 4:3.

>The White Balance I've left on auto as the UK weather changes continually and changing settings every time the sun appears just means faffing around too much. Although recently ive been using the cloud balance for when its cloudy and this seems to bring out the colours much more. Its worth having a play with this as the weather is always changing and i dont think there is a perfect solution.

>Auto focus mode is on spot too.

>I Exposure i leave on as increases the exposure in under-exposed areas by detecting the brightness level part-by-part in the picture.
>I Resolution i leave on Standard it should add contrast to the pics but its very minimal but i leave them on anyway for now...

>Image stabilizer I've left off because some cameras cant deal with the image digiscoped, seems to give the image a less than sharp image although again more practice with this setting needed as I've not used Image stabilizer on this camera at present..

>Everything else on this camera is turned off.

Once the Camera is set up Exposure rates vary depending on light and Distance of bird.

I will say in my limited experience ease of use of this camera is superb the adapter slides straight onto my 25-50x Zoom eyepiece on my scope so it takes just seconds to attach the camera.

Sharpness is excellent with no internal Sharpening from the camera (this is turned off) sometimes adding a sharpen in Photoshop is too much and no sharpening is needed.

The only trouble I'm having at present is the image  at 0 Stop seems very dark, my old camera the excellent Coolpix 4500 meant I always under exposed by -0.7 of a stop, with the leica I'm having to over expose by +0.7 making the bird lighter but that means bringing some of the colors back in Photoshop. I'm sure with a few more tweaking to the settings I may find out what I'm doing wrong.

So Far I'm finding results very good especially as I'm cropping my images to 200-300kb and 800x550px in Photoshop, wheres with my Coolpix smaller cropping had top be done otherwise id loose quality. The quality is definitely there with the Leica D-Lux 5. Most pictures will still need some sharpening in Photoshop.

Another very Important piece of kit on this superb camera is the Video mode Hd video digiscoped is superb and I do try to video any birds as well as photograph them. 

Video Below better viewed in HD mode in Youtube.

All in all this is probably one of the best Digiscoping cameras around for the Leica Scope at present. Im just still in early Stages of learning the potential for this camera.

A small portion of the results Ive managed from this camera are as below.

Ive tried Digiscoping flying birds, the hardest part of Digiscoping with some fairly good results i hope.

Many more pics can be viewed here on my Blog ... http://craigshawsbirdingblog.blogspot.com/ and here on my main website http://boat33.webs.com/latestbirdphotos.htm