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Digiscoping with the Nikon Coolpix 990
The Coolpix 990 is a great digiscoping camera. Most of my digiscoped pics are prduced by
the Nikon Coolpix 990. It's my "in the fields"-camera.
The sharpest pics with the greatest colours came all out of this camera, and the focus even works
in light-conditions where my other cameras would have failed.
The pics of the Nikon Coolpix 990 have great contrast, even if you use the autmatic setting. The
colours are quite authentic (and in my eyes they come out better than e.g. the colours of
the 995).
The big disadvantage of the Nikon Coolpix 990 is the heavy noise, when switching the ISO to
ISO200 or higher. Even at ISO there's quite much ISO noise. But you can delete noise in
photoshop easily, if you don't sharpen the background.
The autofocus of the Nikon Coolpix 990 seems to work faster than the focus of other
coolpix cameras, when fixed to a scope. And the focus is precise in most shots.
The best results I got in the Macro-Setting with the camera zoomed a little bit back.
 Digiscoped with Nikon Coolpix 990 combined to a Swarovski 80HD Spotting Scope.
But attention : With the macro-setting turned on, the autofocus works a little bit
slower than with the normal autofocus. In situations, where you have to be very fast, e.g. when photographing
a moving bird , you should not use the macro-setting. Most of the pics come out sharp with
the autofocus set to normal, too. And that's much faster than the macro-setting.
And as always : The closer you are to the subject, the more details and sharpness you'll
get out of the camera. But with this camera it's even possible to take shots with the
scope-eypiece at 40x and full camera-zoom. That means good shots with 4000mm focal
length. I've never managed such shots with other Nikon-Cameras, like the 995, the 4500 and
especially the CP 5000, which only delivers poor results at higher magnifications.
 Crop from the original file of the Coolpix 990 combined to a Swarovski 80 HD spotting scope.
As you can see, the
ISO100 noise is clearly
visible.
But also you can see
the great details and sharpness of the pic.
Except the ISO-noise there are no disadcantages of this good old Nikon Coolpix camera. For
me it's THE digiscoping camera.
I speculated a lot, why this camera delivers sharper shots than for example the 995 or
the 4500. And I came to the result, that it must have something to do with the
3x zoom of this cameras. All other cameras have a built-in 4x zoom (except the CP5000).
The quality of the 3x zoom has to be much better, expecially when used together with
a scope.
 Crop from an original CP990 file. Photo taken through a Swarovski 80HD Spotting Scope out of a hide
Have a look at the kingfisher pic. Again quite good details and sharpness. Unfortunately the
light wasn't very good, so you can't compare it directly to the Coolpix 5000 shots
of the kingfisher. If the
light has been better, the details would have come out much better. But as you can see,
the Coolpix 5000 delivers slightly more details than the 990 - but only at very close distance. And that's the disadvantage
of the Coolpix 5000. It's not a real digiscoping camera, like the 990 is.
So all in all : The Nikon Coolpix 990 is (in my opinion) the best digiscoping camera I've
tested so far. And the cheapest. Have a look at ebays, and with a little luck you get one
very cheap.
Regards,
Gerd Rossen
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