Playing w/ the Canon A620 - 08 Jan 2006

1230 Hrs. Robin’s at a knitting class at Threadbare in Lansing, so I’ve got a couple hours to bird. Skies are sunny all over the state, except here at the zoo. It’s cloudy, overcast, chilly. 

The place is loaded with hundreds of Canada Geese and Mallard. A Merlin was spotted here yesterday, but none seen today. 

I took the opportunity to play with the new Canon Powershot A620 camera on the Zeiss 85T*Fl. Using the LA-DC58 plastic adaptor (inside wrapped w/ Velcro) I tried digiscoping some of the Mallards. The camera operates very fast in terms of focusing and continuous shooting/storage, but suffers from severe vignetting. 

Only two magnifications work acceptable on the scope: 1) w/ the scope eyepiece at 20X zoom the camera to 3X (see first two images, below), and 2) zoom the eyepiece to 60X and the camera at its lowest setting (35mm). See the last four images. Details are very nice, and the camera holds promise. However, I can’t give up the Nikon Coolpix CP990 just yet.