Laura Erickson's For the Birds

Sunday, March 25, 2007

New cameras

My favorite digiscoper reports that Nikon has just introduced the Nikon Coolpix P5000, which may or may not prove to be the ultimate digiscoping camera. It's going to be a long time before I can afford another camera now! I am a little disappointed with my Sony W100--I don't know if my camera is defective or if there's a problem with the autofocus design--I'm just not pleased with how crisp the photos are that I take through the scope with it, and when I took regular shots of monkeys with it in Costa Rica, they weren't too good, either. I bought it at Best Buy, and would have to pay a restocking fee to return it, and just haven't had time to think about it. I shouldn't have given my Canon SD-500 to my son until I made sure that I liked the Sony more--it does have a nice, bright screen which is pretty nice when shooting pictures outside.

Meanwhile, my good birding friend Brian mentioned in an email today that Sony is upgrading their DSC-H5, the camera I take most of my photos with. The upcoming H9 will have 15x optical zoom, 8 megapixels, and has one of those cool screens that flips out, making it easier to take shots at all kinds of weird angles. That would have been very helpful when I was taking pictures of myself this fall with Florida Scrub-Jays on my head. But my Sony DSC-H5 does a great job, and I even get decent digiscoped pictures with it, so even if I never can afford to upgrade again, I'll keep getting as many photos as I can.